How could an Erlang process communicate with an ICE-based application? The mix seems a bit strange (why would you need ICE when you already have Erlang 😉 ) but without entering in details of why we would like to do so, let’s consider how can we plug an Erlang sub-system in a ICE application.

One way to go would be to write a slice2erl compiler! That’s presumably lot of work. This kind of work is being done for OCaml in the Hydro project … and is on my list of next things to play with.

Another way to get Erlang talk to ICE application would be via a custom intermediate translator between the Erlang app and the ICE system (using some intermediate language having a complete interface with both Erlang and ICE, like C, Java, or Python); yes, this surely add complexity and slow down the full system, but efficiency of distributed application is more often bound by design than by runtime ;).

Btw, as far as ease-of-development is concern, I have the same kind of feeling when comparing C++ to Python or ICE to Erlang 🙂