Erlang (programming language)/Tutorials

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Revision as of 16:02, 21 May 2009 by imported>Eric Evers (→‎Overview)
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Overview

Erlang is language created to do parallel programming with message passing.

Erlang is a functional language. A functional language is one that is based on lambda calculus. In lambda calculus variables have single assignment and behave like mathematical functions and functions are stateless. The advantages of referential transparency(single assignment) are many. Single assignment makes debugging easier(Joe Armstrong http://www.se-radio.net). Statelessness makes hot code swapping easy in erlang(Joe Armstrong). Referential transparency makes editing and code transformation easier(via find and replace). Functional languages have the advantage that syntax and semantics are unified. This unification makes it easier for code to modify itself safely, which facilitates meta-programming. Added benefits of functional programming include the ability to prove things like the correctness and equivalence between programs (see Functional Programming [1])

Erlang has been around for 20 years and has a large library of functions available, especially for networking and the web.

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