What is Erlang?

[AstonJ]

Inspired by some of the comments in this panel discussion - if somebody asked you what Erlang is, what would you say? How would you describe it?

[AstonJ]

I would echo some of what we’ve got in our guest welcome message

A (programming) language that’s part of massive systems that underpin pretty much the entire internet.

A language that’s been one of the best kept secrets of some of tech’s biggest giants.

… you’ll be in great company, and not only with those who may be starting out just like you, but with many who have real world experience scaling gigantic systems …and over decades too!

…it could just be what’s needed to take your app to the next level; faster, with smaller teams, and without the headache or financial commitment normally associated with such ambitious projects.

What would you say?

[TD5]

This cuts to the heart of it for me:

• Functional & immutable by default
• Concurrency-oriented
• Stable & mature

[AstonJ]

Nice one Tom!

I wonder if you could perhaps share some WhatsApp insights too? I’m sure any tidbits would prove interesting - whether it’s the size of your team, number of servers you’re using, number of messages being handled on a daily basis, whether you use any of the other BEAM languages, any favourite Erlang libraries, etc.

[mikpe]

Erlang is a concurrent language with a call-by-value functional core.

(One could say more, but this captures its essence without diving too much into non-technical stuff, IMO.)

[AstonJ]

Thanks for adding your thoughts Mikael

Also similarly, I wonder if you could give us some of the similar insights I mentioned to Tom above on how you’re using Klarna?

I think it would be great if when people search “What is Erlang” then come to this thread and see some of the biggest names in tech using it