Erlang

• Erlang is a soft realtime, declarative, functional language for concurrent, distributed systems.

• It is robust (used for telephone switches!), fail-soft, etc.

• It allows "hot fixes" to running systems.

• It has no threads, but it has really cheap processes.

• It's more like a fleet of Volkswagens than a Maserati.

• Programming in Erlang is a bit odd:
  • Variables may only be set once.
  • Function calls use a bit of pattern-matching.
  • So do (some) variable assignments.

Examples:

  A = [1,2,3].
  [1,B,3] = A.
  B.

  -module(test).      % Enter the "test" module.
  -export([fac/1]).   % export a "fac" function with one argument.

  fac(0) -> 1;             % respond to fac(0) with 1.
  fac(N) -> N * fac(N-1).  % respont to fac(N) with N * fac(N-1).

The "fac/1" function is defined in the "test" module. It responds when "fac" is called with one argument.

Links:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erlang_%28programming_language%29

• http://www.erlang.org/

• http://www.erlang.org/starting.html

• http://www.pragprog.com/titles/jaerlang/index.html

Sparks