Chapter 4. Types (or Lack Thereof)

Modern functional languages are often known for their fancy type systems, which are powerful systems that let programmers obtain more safety and speed while doing less. Static type systems vary a lot—from C- and Java-like systems where annotations are provided to the compiler, to rather complex systems that depend on advanced mathematical concepts to guarantee the crash-free nature of a program. Other type systems are rather crude—not static at all, but dynamic. They give no guarantees about the safety of a piece of software, and just check everything while it runs.

This chapter introduces Erlang’s type system, the reasons behind its use, and how that affects you, as a brand-new Erlang programmer.

Dynamite-Strong ...

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