Erlang Programming

Chapter 1. Introduction

Why are we really excited about introducing you to Erlang? What do we feel is really special about the language? Its lightweight concurrency model with massive process scalability independent of the underlying operating system is second to none. With its approach that avoids shared data, Erlang is the perfect fit for multicore processors, in effect solving many of the synchronization problems and bottlenecks that arise with many conventional programming languages. Its declarative nature makes Erlang programs short and compact, and its built-in features make it ideal for fault-tolerant, soft real-time systems. Erlang also comes with very strong integration capabilities, so Erlang systems can be seamlessly incorporated into larger systems. This means that gradually bringing Erlang into a system and displacing less-capable conventional languages is not at all unusual.

Although Erlang might have been around for some time, the language itself, the virtual machine, and its libraries have been keeping pace with the rapidly changing requirements of the software industry. They are constantly being improved by a competent, enthusiastic, and dedicated team, aided by computer science researchers from universities around the world.

This introduction gives a high-level overview of the characteristics and features that have made Erlang so successful, providing insight into the context in which the language was designed, and how this influenced its current shape. Using case ...