State of the BEAM 2017: Survey Results

Intro

You can't improve what you don't measure, and since I think there are areas in the BEAM community (Erlang, Elixir, LFE, Efene, Alpaca, Clojerl et al.) to improve we need to have a better picture of it.

That's why some months ago I decided to create this survey, I told to some people and started researching other "State of the X Community" yearly surveys, I wrote some draft questions and published to some people for feedback, after a couple of rounds I made a Form and ran a test survey for more feedback, after a couple dozen answers I cleared the results and announced it publicly with a weakly reminder on multiple channels.

Result Analysis

We got 423 Responses up to this point.

I present the results of the State of the BEAM Survey 2017 here in two ways:

• Bar charts sorted by most answers to less
  • On questions with many answers I make a cut at some point
• Raw data tables sorted by most answers to less
  • Here I did some consolidation of answers to avoid making them too large

I was thinking on doing a deep analysis on the answers but later I realized that if I did an analysis many people would read mine and avoid analyzing it themselves in detail.

Instead I decided to open an analysis thread in some forum and later maybe summarize the most interesting comments.

To ease the discussion I will do some light observations where I see it makes sense and make some questions to open the discussion.

Before diving into the result I want to make explicit two things that may make the results less representative than they should:

2. The "Survivorship Bias Effect"

From the wikipedia article on Survivorship bias

Survivorship bias or survival bias is the logical error of concentrating on the people or things that made it past some selection process and overlooking those that did not, typically because of their lack of visibility. This can lead to false conclusions in several different ways. It is a form of selection bias.

Survivorship bias can lead to overly optimistic beliefs because failures are ignored, such as when companies that no longer exist are excluded from analyses of financial performance.

The damaged portions of returning planes show locations where they can take a hit and still return home safely; those hit in other places do not survive.

This survey is done on people that wanted to learn Erlang, learned it, and are still active enough on the community to see the survey announcement.

This means that the answers are from the ones that "survived", which makes it really hard to get good feedback on the bad parts of the language, tooling and community since the most affected by it aren't going to stay around to fill this survey.

How to reach those? I don't know, propose solutions on the discussion.

I forgot to ask if I could make public the name of the companies so I won't, but I can say that I got 202 responses and most of them are not duplicates.

Things to improve for next year

• Ask users if they want their answers available to be distributed in raw form for others to analyze
• Ask users if I can share publicly the name of the company where they use Erlang
• Decide what to do about Elixir-only replies, maybe make a question about it
• Make specific questions regarding better tooling
• I forgot Russia and Central America options, maybe next time do Latin America?

Let's see the results!

Which languages of the BEAM do you use?

Clearly Erlang is the most used language, ignoring the Elixir Effect, I'm kind of disappointed by the lack of users trying alternative languages. More so given the fact that many of the complaints or requests in other questions are already solved by other languages in the ecosystem, for example "better macros" or lisp inspired features being solved by LFE, static/stronger typing or better static analysis being solved by Alpaca, Elixir's pipe operator and a more mainstream syntax being solved by Efene.

My advice to the community, try the other languages, blog/tweet about it and share feedback with their creators, there's a language for each taste!

How would you characterize your use of BEAM Languages today?

Many people using it for serious stuff, the Open Source answer is really low here but is contradicted by another answer below.

I think I should add another option for something like "experiments", "try new ideas".

In which domains are you applying it?

What industry or industries do you develop for?

How long have you been using Erlang?

The entrants (1 year or less) being less than 2 and 3 years may be discouraging or maybe as a sign that this survey didn't reach as many newcomers as it should.

What's your age

Similar to the previous one, the survey shows that we are not interesting to young programmers (or this survey is not interesting to them :)

What's your gender

One I was expecting, but bad nonetheless.

Where are you located?

What is your level of experience with functional programming?

7 answers got the joke or are really awesome programmers :)

Prior to using Erlang, which were your primary development languages?

Which client-side language are you using with Erlang?

In your Erlang projects, do you interoperate with other languages? if so, which ones?

Which is your primary development environment?

I thought Emacs would win here by the fact that the Erlang creators use Emacs.

Where do you go for Erlang news and discussions?

Which versions of the Erlang VM do you currently use for development?

We are really up to date, we are near a point where we can assume maps on our libraries :)

Which versions of the Erlang VM do you currently use in production?

Of course production is a little more conservative

Which build tool do you use?

Nice to see Rebar3 picking up momentum, Mix being mainly the Elixir Effect, next year I should add an option for "Mix for erlang or mixed projects".

How do you test your code?

Surprised by EUnit being on top, why do people prefer it over Common Test?

How do you deploy your application?

Lot of custom deploy scripts and docker/kubernetes here, maybe we should have better deploy support in our tools?

What is your organization's size?

Can we say that Erlang works on organizations of any size?

Which operating system(s) you use for development?

Almost same amount of Windows and FreeBSD, is it because Windows support is bad? or is this a reflection of the usual developer OS choice in any programming language?

Which operating system(s) you use for deployment?

Where do you deploy your applications?

I don't think this question provides useful information, maybe I should add options?

Which events have you attended in the last year?

Local Meetups at the top is a nice one, we can work to promote more of these.

Do you use HiPE?

Do you use dialyzer?

How important have each of these aspects of Erlang been to you and your projects?

Remember that charts and tables are sorted by most to less answers to compare correctly in the following set of questions.

Community

Very Important	157	37.74%
Fairly Important	112	26.92%
Important	79	18.99%
Slightly Important	52	12.50%
No Opinion	8	1.92%
Not Important at All	8	1.92%

Concurrency facilities

Very Important	306	73.73%
Fairly Important	58	13.98%
Important	36	8.67%
No Opinion	7	1.69%
Slightly Important	7	1.69%
Not Important at All	1	0.24%

Ease of development

Very Important	205	49.52%
Fairly Important	98	23.67%
Important	72	17.39%
Slightly Important	27	6.52%
No Opinion	10	2.42%
Not Important at All	2	0.48%

Functional Programming

Very Important	207	49.88%
Fairly Important	105	25.30%
Important	53	12.77%
Slightly Important	33	7.95%
No Opinion	9	2.17%
Not Important at All	8	1.93%

Immutability

Very Important	222	53.62%
Fairly Important	90	21.74%
Important	60	14.49%
Slightly Important	30	7.25%
No Opinion	8	1.93%
Not Important at All	4	0.97%

Runtime performance

Very Important	148	35.75%
Fairly Important	122	29.47%
Important	95	22.95%
Slightly Important	36	8.70%
Not Important at All	7	1.69%
No Opinion	6	1.45%

The REPL

Very Important	145	35.02%
Fairly Important	106	25.60%
Important	74	17.87%
Slightly Important	61	14.73%
No Opinion	19	4.59%
Not Important at All	9	2.17%

Tracing

Slightly Important	96	23.02%
Very Important	95	22.78%
Fairly Important	90	21.58%
Important	82	19.66%
Not Important at All	29	6.95%
No Opinion	25	6.00%

What has been most frustrating or has prevented you from using Erlang more than you do now?

App deployment

Not Frustrating at All	120	30.08%
Slightly Frustrating	93	23.31%
Frustrating	54	13.53%
Fairly Frustrating	41	10.28%
Quite the contrary: I love this feature	38	9.52%
No Opinion	29	7.27%
Very Frustrating	24	6.02%

Error messages

Slightly Frustrating	119	29.82%
Not Frustrating at All	89	22.31%
Frustrating	48	12.03%
Fairly Frustrating	43	10.78%
Quite the contrary: I love this feature	39	9.77%
Very Frustrating	38	9.52%
No Opinion	23	5.76%

Finding libraries

Slightly Frustrating	137	34.08%
Not Frustrating at All	121	30.10%
Frustrating	64	15.92%
Fairly Frustrating	31	7.71%
Quite the contrary: I love this feature	21	5.22%
Very Frustrating	15	3.73%
No Opinion	13	3.23%

Hard to Learn it

Not Frustrating at All	204	51.13%
Slightly Frustrating	77	19.30%
Quite the contrary: I love this feature	48	12.03%
Frustrating	29	7.27%
No Opinion	21	5.26%
Fairly Frustrating	14	3.51%
Very Frustrating	6	1.50%

Hiring and staffing

No Opinion	124	31.47%
Slightly Frustrating	78	19.80%
Not Frustrating at All	71	18.02%
Fairly Frustrating	43	10.91%
Frustrating	41	10.41%
Very Frustrating	25	6.35%
Quite the contrary: I love this feature	12	3.05%

Installation process

Not Frustrating at All	218	55.05%
Slightly Frustrating	67	16.92%
Quite the contrary: I love this feature	54	13.64%
Frustrating	23	5.81%
Fairly Frustrating	16	4.04%
No Opinion	14	3.54%
Very Frustrating	4	1.01%

Long term viability

Not Frustrating at All	194	48.87%
Quite the contrary: I love this feature	74	18.64%
Slightly Frustrating	46	11.59%
No Opinion	41	10.33%
Frustrating	28	7.05%
Fairly Frustrating	9	2.27%
Very Frustrating	5	1.26%

Need more docs/tutorials

Not Frustrating at All	127	32.32%
Slightly Frustrating	124	31.55%
Frustrating	44	11.20%
Fairly Frustrating	37	9.41%
Quite the contrary: I love this feature	22	5.60%
No Opinion	22	5.60%
Very Frustrating	17	4.33%

Need more text editor support/IDEs

Not Frustrating at All	168	42.00%
Slightly Frustrating	93	23.25%
Frustrating	39	9.75%
Quite the contrary: I love this feature	32	8.00%
Fairly Frustrating	28	7.00%
Very Frustrating	22	5.50%
No Opinion	18	4.50%

Need more tools

Slightly Frustrating	128	32.16%
Not Frustrating at All	99	24.87%
Frustrating	58	14.57%
Fairly Frustrating	40	10.05%
Very Frustrating	34	8.54%
No Opinion	26	6.53%
Quite the contrary: I love this feature	13	3.27%

No static typing

Not Frustrating at All	113	28.18%
Slightly Frustrating	105	26.18%
Quite the contrary: I love this feature	63	15.71%
Frustrating	40	9.98%
Fairly Frustrating	34	8.48%
Very Frustrating	25	6.23%
No Opinion	21	5.24%

Release schedule

Not Frustrating at All	258	64.99%
Quite the contrary: I love this feature	57	14.36%
No Opinion	43	10.83%
Slightly Frustrating	26	6.55%
Frustrating	9	2.27%
Very Frustrating	2	0.50%
Fairly Frustrating	2	0.50%

Runtime performance

Not Frustrating at All	185	46.25%
Slightly Frustrating	72	18.00%
Quite the contrary: I love this feature	57	14.25%
Frustrating	32	8.00%
No Opinion	25	6.25%
Fairly Frustrating	17	4.25%
Very Frustrating	12	3.00%

Unpleasant community

Not Frustrating at All	224	56.14%
Quite the contrary: I love this feature	79	19.80%
No Opinion	45	11.28%
Slightly Frustrating	26	6.52%
Frustrating	14	3.51%
Very Frustrating	7	1.75%
Fairly Frustrating	4	1.00%

Version incompatibility

Not Frustrating at All	212	53.13%
Slightly Frustrating	84	21.05%
No Opinion	40	10.03%
Quite the contrary: I love this feature	29	7.27%
Frustrating	19	4.76%
Fairly Frustrating	11	2.76%
Very Frustrating	4	1.00%

Any feature you would like to see added to the language?

This was an open ended question, I'm summarizing similar answers here in groups

Other answers with one vote:

• Backward compatibility
• BEAM on browsers
• Better binary syntax
• Better container support
• Better datetime support
• Better documentation
• Better errors
• Better global registry
• Better if expression
• Better map support in mnesia
• Better ML integration
• Better module system
• Better proc_lib
• Better profiler
• Better site
• Better string module
• Better unicode support
• Bigger standard library
• Bring back parameterized modules
• Cleanup standard library
• Code change watcher and loader
• Consistent error return
• CRDTs
• Curses version of observer
• Database drivers/support
• Early return statement
• Encrypted inter node communication
• Erlang leveldb/rocksdb (better DETS)
• First class records (not as tuples)
• Function composition
• IPv6
• Laziness
• LLVM based Hipe
• Map comprehensions
• Monads
• More behaviors
• More Lispy
• More robust on_load
• Multi-poll sets
• Native compilation
• New logo
• Numerical/GPU support
• Orleans
• Package manager
• Rational numbers
• Remove stuff
• Short circuit folding a list
• Single file distribution
• String performance
• Top-like tool
• Type checking as you type
• Type inference
• WebRTC
• With expression like Elixir