stdin/stdout in Erlang

Erlang blogs and message boards are littered with messages expressing dissatisfaction with Erlang syntax, the language's handling of strings, verbosity of records etc. Members of the discontented crowd usually stop short when specifics are requested. I will try to make my small rant about Erlang as specific as possible.

My grudge is about stdin/stdout. Why would modern software need these? Existence of stdin/stdout assumes that Erlang is started from a text-based shell. These days it usually not the case. Why io:format() pretty-printing is crafted to output text on a screen of 80 columns? Erlang is all about non-blocking input/output and then there is io:get_line() getting text from nowhere. I am aware of Elang's telecom heritage and RS-232 interface. But this kind of thing definitely slows the adoption of Erlang in today's world of World-Wide Web.

The new version of teeterl does not have io module as it does not have stdin/stdout concept. On the other hand the new teeterl has had an embedded web server with comet functionality from day one. All input/output in the new teeterl is done through a socket and HTTP. Instead of io:format() there is format:to_json() call and all actual formatting including pretty-printing is done on the client side with jQuery/Javascript. Well, a printout still may appear on stderr but only as an epitaph on the tomb of init process.