New to Erlang - recommended way to start as a beginner?

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Hi everyone,
I’m a programming student with experience in C/C# and some networking, and I want to start learning Erlang properly. I’m especially interested in fault-tolerant and concurrent systems.

I’d appreciate recommendations on:

  • Where a beginner should start (syntax vs OTP first?)

  • Books, courses, or tutorials that are still relevant today

  • Common beginner mistakes to avoid

  • Small starter projects that help build the right Erlang mindset

Thanks in advance — looking forward to learning the Erlang way.

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Read the whole documentation, including function description. It is a gold mine.

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  1. I highly recommend Joe Armstrong’s (co-creator of Erlang) Programming Erlang
  2. https://learnyousomeerlang.com/ - Fred Hebert is another engaging and informative author who does a great job of introducing the language
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LYSE is great. I never really got on with Programming Erlang, I found Erlang Programming made a lot more sense to me in terms of learning the language and syntax with some good starting work for OTP, and then Erlang And OTP In Action made the practicals make more sense. But all these were all published quite a while ago and there’s a lot that’s changed. Adopting Erlang doesn’t cover anything like as much ground but it has a really good pragmatic overview and will get you started pretty well. I’d probably work through that and then get onto LYSE.

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After reading LYSE and/or Joe’s Programming Erlang, you must read Designing for Scalability
with Erlang/OTP by Francesco Cesarini and Steve Vinoski. It is a must read for understanding OTP.

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