Panel Debate: Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel once said that "The only thing we learn from history that we learn nothing from history". While the context and era was different, these wise words can also be applied to the software industry. Why are we repeating the same mistakes done by others decades ago? Why are we reinventing the wheel when tackling problems already researched and solved, and in doing so, reinventing them badly? We are trying to reach nirvana, where programming languages are not only beautiful, but also useful. Compact, easy to maintain and predictable.

But in our quest to do so, we seem to be taking two steps forward and one step back. In this panel debate, representatives from the industry will be discussing and debating with the audience (and language inventors) on the reasons we are in the mess we're in and what we need to do to get out of it.

Tackling Dirty Jobs with Erlang's Schedulers

A key feature of the Erlang virtual machine (VM) is its sophisticated and scalable schedulers, which are responsible for ensuring application processes and tasks take advantage of all system cores. In this talk, Steve will explain some of the inner workings of Erlang's schedulers, focusing on how large-scale applications such as the Riak database augment the VM with native C/C++ code for performance and for application integration. Steve will also present some brand new Erlang features that help "dirty" code cooperate seamlessly with Erlang's schedulers.

Talk objectives:

- To explain some inner workings and new features of the Erlang VM, and show how native C/C++ code can be used to safely enhance Erlang applications.

Target audience:

- Anyone interested in high-performance Erlang applications, the latest Erlang features, or VM details.