There were hundreds of or thousands of programming languages created since the invention of computer. All these languages have the same target which is to make the computer do what we want it do. So we may find that many languages have the same functions, i.e, one task can be completed by one language can be completed by another language as well. Now we may wonder why we need so many different languages. Can we just have C or C++ since they provide the best performance we need. The answer obviously is no.We do need other languages other than C and C++. Here are the reasons.The creation of diff...

Erlang  is a general-purpose concurrent, garbage-collected programming language and runtime system. It stays strong while building concurrency programs. Erlang provides language-level features for creating and managing processes with the aim of simplifying concurrent programming. It has large application in many chat service well known now such as Whatsapp and initial version of Facebook chat. Previously we have written an article Use of Erlang in WhatsApp. In this post, we will talk about the story about use of Erlang in Facebook chat. The initial version of Facebook chat is developed by...

After many years, people are still discussing whether Erlang is a small language. People have all sorts of doubt about it, but with the appearance of WhatsApp, we may change our mind.What is WhatsApp, from its official website:WhatsApp Messenger is a cross-platform mobile messaging app which allows you to exchange messages without having to pay for SMS.The more funny thing is the main developer of WhatsApp Rick Reed worked in Yahoo and SGI before he joined WhatsApp and he didn't have any knowledge about Erlang at that time:Joined WhatsApp in 2011，New to ErlangLater in another article:Join...

Erlang is a complex system, and I can’t do its inner workings justice in a short article, but I wanted to give some insight into what goes on when a module is compiled and loaded. As with most compilers, the first step is to convert the textual source to an abstract syntax tree, but that’s unremarkable. What is interesting is that the code goes through three major representations, and you can look at each of them.Erlang is unique among functional languages in its casual scope rules. You introduce variables as you go, without fanfare, and there’s no creeping indentation cau...

Over the last couple of weeks I did an OO programming experiment. I call it the Erlang design pattern. It is based on the Actor model but goes some steps further. At its core just like the Actor model there are active entities (objects) that have a thread and a message queue with the thread waiting on the message queue to do some stuff.The Erlang design pattern extends the Actor model by first dividing the software program into active (actors, that have their own thread) and passive (objects, whose methods are called by other actors) objects.Second, I enforced that all methods of an ...

Introduction On an evolutionary scale of innovation from one to ten (one being Bloomberg and Citi Group, eight being Google and Cirque Du Soleil, and ten being the company you couldn't imagine in your wildest dreams), the company I work for is about a three1. Being employed by this bastion of ingenuity affords me certain opportunities I can't get elsewhere. For example, every developer gets to interview potential candidates he might end up working with. During our last round of these int...

I first planned to release this text as an appendix entry for Learn You Some Erlang, but considering this feels more like editorial content and not exactly something for a reference text, I decided it would fit better as a blog post.Many newcomers to Erlang manage to understand the syntax and program around it without ever getting used to it. I've read and heard many complaints regarding the syntax and the 'ant turd tokens' (a subjectively funny way to refer to ,, ; and .), how annoying it is, etc.As mentioned at some point in the book, Erlang draws its syntax from Prolog. While this gives a r...