Reia where scripting meets concurrency

Reia reminds me of that Reese's peanut butter cup commercial:

Hey, you got your Ruby/Python in my Erlang! Hey, you got your Erlang in my Ruby/Python!

And then there was this light that went off in someone's head - Why couldn't you bring the "stuff" people like about higher level languages down into something that, quite frankly just kicks ass, in Erlang?

To kick it off - and to quote the Reia wiki:

Reia (pronounced RAY-uh) is a Python/Ruby-like scripting language for the Erlang virtual machine (BEAM). Reia aims to expose all the features and functionality of Erlang in a language more familiar to programmers of scripting languages, while improving string handling, regular expressions, linking with external libraries, and other tasks which are generally considered outside the scope of Erlang. Reia is distributed under the MIT License.

Well, it's happening right now with Reia. I've been watching this project over my GitHub feed for maybe a month or so now and it's really cool seeing the leaps and bounds that Tony Arcieri is making with this little gem of a language. Granted, he still has a ways to go (and he openly admits this), I suggest giving it a try for fun() (that's my new favorite pun by the way).

Let me paste a few ideals from the Reia site to pique your interest a little more:
Concurrent programming is the future - very true, now if DB's would just catch up (oh, wait CouchDB!

You don't need an "everything is a..." language - he calls out SmallTalk and Ruby, but his argument is convincing, I think we've all been here before.

Don't build what you can steal - I really like that quote in regard to using a syntax of Python/Ruby and then laying it lovingly over the Erlang VM and OTP framework.

Oh Noes, Your Business is Under Attack!

A somewhat interesting link came through my RSS reader this morning, it wasn't the well articulated basis of this gentleman's argument, nor was it the catchy title. What really made me think (and laugh) was the first post by a man named Will, who apparently works for the aforementioned company "waging war" upon Ruby/Rails.

I think it speaks volumes if you or the company you work for really has to dive into some random persons personal blog and begin defending yourself when all this guy is doing is giving an opinion. You're putting out a competing product (uh, sure!) and that's great...some will use it many will not. But it really makes me shake my head (knowing some people who work at Zend personally) when I see a Zend'er come out with the gloves up just clutching and grabbing for some traction on their products worth.

Really, if your product was worth a damn in the first place you'd likely have 9 other posts to this one touting the grace and power your product encapsulates. Instead, you put those gloves up because you know you have put out an inferior product and are trying not to be the last kid picked.

Finally, I must admit here that "Will" (IF that IS your REAL name...haha) does a good job of playing the diplomat, trying not to insult the blogger's intelligence and still keep him as a potential client (although, from the sounds of it, he's made his decision).

It's really great to have passion (see my last post) but sometimes you can't let that get in the way of what people outside your click think. Let them have it, if you're right, well then they'll all see in the end when you succeed.

ESPN Radio and their advertisers

I have XM Radio and have had it for a number of years. I love it. I also love ESPN. So naturally having the two together is great. What's not so great is the advertising that ESPN hocks on it's xm channel (140). It's the same stuff every break: "Male enhancement in 3-5 seconds?!" or "Tired of seeing everyone around you living the good life?". You'd think a media juggernaut like ESPN could pull in some better schwag to push into our ears than this garbage.

I'm not sure how much longer I can take it; I mean you always have the ability to change the dial...but I'm American, that's a lot of work.

Thinking back on it - I think a solid work around would be the ability (like you have on a directv remote) to hit a "previous" button so that hopping between channels is easier.

This was a shitty rant...but what do I care - it's just a place for me to let the trash out of my head. It will be (I'm guessing) a good six months before anyone even see's this stuff.