What is Erlang?

Erlang is a functional programming language created by Ericsson. It has cheap concurrency. This means that Erlang allows the programmer to create threads inexpensively. Old programming languages, like C and Java, allow the creation of tens of thousands of objects, but very few threads. Erlang, on the other hand, allows the creation of tens of thousands of threads, and schedules them efficiently. This is just one of Erlang's many excellent characteristics.

Erlang Resources:

• Open Source Erlang
• Erlang for C/C++/Java Programmers
• Joe Armstrong's PhD Thesis: Making reliable distributed systems in the presence of software errors
  [Abstract] [PDF] [Website]
• YAWS is a high performance web server
• Comparison of Apache and Yaws
  Yaws handles DDoS attacks: "Apache dies at about 4,000 parallel sessions. Yaws is still functioning at over 80,000 parallel connections."

Michael's Erlang Projects

• Handling large file uploads with Yaws
• Erlang OTP Chat Server
• Toga Photo Album (in progress)

Copyright © 1999-2007 Michael Leonhard