Erlang Forums 2024 Update!

Welcome to our annual update everyone :icon_biggrin:

It’s been another great year for Erlang and the BEAM world. The Erlang Core Team has been hard at work on Erlang, OTP and the Erlang VM, and the Erlang and BEAM community have been working on everything else, from hardware to software, and not just specifically in Erlang, but in all of the BEAM languages that run on the Erlang VM too - there’s been a lot happening!

Before we get into some of that did you know that Erlang is one of the most worked on languages? At least in terms of updates - there were 37 releases last year alone (and another one due in just a matter of weeks!) and out of all the languages we track on Devtalk it ranks as one of the highest in that regard. Not bad for a language that is decades old and one that some mistakingly feel is not used much!

We all know of course that it is, and, in recent years, ever more increasingly through its children, the various languages that run on the Erlang VM.

The most active of these are Elixir, LFE and Gleam. You can check out the LFE and Gleam forums here to see what they’ve been up to, and if you want to take a look at how Elixir is doing check out the Elixir Forum’s annual announcement - we won’t give away too much, other than to say Elixir is now making excellent progress in the machine learning space and is also getting into native (mobile) development! Who’d have thought that an Erlang language would one day be making headway in these spaces!? It’s certainly an exciting time to be an Erlanger, no matter which flavour of Erlang floats your boat :nerd_face:

Let’s move on to what we’ve got in store for you this year…

2024 Giveaways!

Our giveaways are back - with 5 prizes every month!

Don’t forget we have similar giveaways on Devtalk and the Elixir Forum too!

2024 Discounts!!

We’ve got some super discounts lined up for you again this year - most of these are in conjunction with Devtalk:

Don’t forget to check out our amazing sponsors who help make all this possible! :hearts:

Members of the Year!

Our MOTY scheme is back again this year! It’s a fun way to reward some of our most helpful and active members - those who go above and beyond in what’s expected of them and those who do their best to represent the community in the best possible light. If you add something of value to the forum then there’s a good chance you’ll be noticed! Look out for our announcement next year to see who makes our esteemed list for this year, and keeping reading on to see who won last year’s…

2023 Members of the Month!

Here’s our list of last year’s MOTYs - if you’re named here, thank you and well done! Please also read the bit at the end as we have an ebook for you!

@afa

@asabil

@carlotm

@crownedgrouse

@danilagamma

@dischoen

@dominic

@elbrujohalcon

@eproxus

@erlangys

@etnt

@fizfaz

@gumm

@hackerjones

@Inforista

@jchrist

@jimdigriz

@josevalim

@juhlig

@kuna.prime

@Led

@LeonardB

@LostKobrakai

@Maria-12648430

@max-au

@mikpe

@mmin

@MononcQc

@mpope

@mworrell

@nato

@nzok

@peerst

@phild

@reymono

@RMorisset

@saleyn

@scherrey

@schnef

@seriyps

@sg2342

@starbelly

@TD5

@tsloughter

@unix1

@vances

@vkatsuba

@wfv

@williamthome

@zabrane

:041: :041: :041: :041: :041:

As a thank you, we have an ebook for each of our winners! We have 25 books from PragProg and 25 from Manning so if you are listed above, please PM @AstonJ with your first choice from one publisher and your second choice from the other, as well as your full name, country of residence and email address - we’ll then allocate these on a first come first serve basis :023: (They don’t have to be an Elixir book either, they can be any book so long as they are published by either PragProg or Manning.)

Forum plans for 2024

To help put us in good stead for the year (and in preparation for our new projects) we moved to a bigger and more powerful server, and with the forum and community growing we thought it was about time we took on another moderator, so please join us in welcoming @max-au to the team! Maxim was the next biggest poster in the list and he also possesses many of the qualities we look for in a moderator, so was of course a natural choice! Welcome to the team Maxim, and thank you for everything you’ve been doing for Erlang and the community! :hearts:

With our new server and last year’s addition of expanded sections the forum is now nicely geared up to serve us well for the foreseeable future. Discourse is also in the process of adding some of our most-wanted features, such as thread fields (to help enforce proper submission of threads in certain sections) and the ability for mods to provide feedback for items in the review queue, so this has given us some breathing space and got us thinking about how best to add even more value to the community, and perhaps particularly, in ways that will help support and encourage growth of Erlang and its children.

Like the forum, many of these projects are going to be very community centric - if you like what we’ve done on the forums then we think you’re going to love what we’ve got in store for you, and while we’re not quite ready to give you the full details just yet, here’s a sneak peek of one of them:

Intrigued? Excited!? We hope so! :048:

Keep an eye on our members only sections as we’ll be posting more details soon!

Wrapping up

2023 was a fantastic year for the entire Erlang ecosystem, and the areas in which Erlang and Erlang languages are expanding bodes well for the future. Erlang is the rock that powers the entire BEAM community, and it’s amazing how after all these decades it is just as relevant today as it was then. It really has stood the test of time and we can’t wait to see where it and the BEAM community will be another few decades from now. One things for sure, with your continued support, we know it’s going to be somewhere amazing! :sparkles:

Thank you everyone, wising you all a happy, healthy and prosperous 2024

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