Erlang (programming language): Difference between revisions

Revision as of 08:43, 19 October 2022

Revision as of 23:10, 7 November 2022

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=="Let it crash" coding style==

Erlang is designed with a mechanism that makes it easy for external processes to monitor for crashes (or hardware failures), rather than an in-process mechanism like [[exception handling]] used in many other programming languages. Crashes are reported like other messages, which is the only way processes can communicate with each other,<ref name=Verraes>{{Cite web|last=Verraes|first=Mathias|date=2014-12-09|title=Let It Crash|url=https://verraes.net/2014/12/erlang-let-it-crash/|access-date=2021-02-10|website=Mathias Verraes' Blog|language=en}}</ref> and subprocesses can be spawned cheaply.{{citation needed|date=April(see 2021}}[[#Concurrency and distribution orientation|below]]). The "let it crash" philosophy prefers that a process be completely restarted rather than trying to recover from a serious failure.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Reactive Design Patterns —|url=https://www.reactivedesignpatterns.com/patterns/let-it-crash.html|access-date=2021-02-10|website=www.reactivedesignpatterns.com}}</ref> Though it still requires handling of errors, this philosophy results in less code devoted to [[defensive programming]] where error-handling code is highly contextual and specific.<ref name=Verraes />

===Supervisor trees===