An Introduction to Erlang From behind the Trenches
summary
Erlang claims real wins: WhatsApp runs 450M users and hit a 54 billion‑message day while operating on 200 servers with 13 backend engineers, thanks to lightweight processes that spawn in microseconds, message passing, OTP supervisors and hot code loading that retains state during upgrades. Code size drops (studies report ~4–20× less code), bit‑syntax lets TCP headers decode in ~7 lines, and Phoenix scales to 2 million WebSocket connections. Runtime upgrades and “nine nines” uptime remain difficult; five nines is realistic.
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chapters (12)
- 0:00Intro
- 2:55WhatsApp Acquisition by Facebook
- 7:02Telecom Applications: Issues
- 14:25The Ancestors
- 24:07Erlang Highlights: Factorial
- 26:45Erlang Highlights: High-level Constructs
- 33:59Erlang Highlights: Concurrency
- 36:44Erlang Highlights: Robustness
- 38:42Erlang Highlights: Distribution
- 39:26Erlang Highlights: Hot Code Swap
- 40:27Multicore Erlang
- 44:08The Myths of Erlang....
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