Stuff Goes Bad: Erlang in Anger

http://engineering.heroku.com/blogs/2014-09-17-erlang-in-anger

by mononcqc • 12 years ago

292 51 12 years ago

engineering.heroku.com

tieTYT• 12 years ago

For those that want to get started, I've been reading the Erlang Thesis^1. It's a really good read. I recommend it even if you don't plan on learning Erlang because it will teach you why it's difficult to build reliable systems when processes can share mutable state.

1: http://www.erlang.org/download/armstrong_thesis_2003.pdf

tilt_error• 12 years ago

Impressing.

darkof• 12 years ago

Like! :)

chollida1• 12 years ago

Wow, great book. Worth reading alone for chapters 7-9 which deal with debugging running process.

I hope they get fleshed out a bit more.

I wish more technical books would dive into the inner workings of the language like this. https://realworldocaml.org/ was the only other book I've read in the past few years that has done this.

I might be the exception in the book buying crowd but I don't want a book to teach me the syntax, I want to know how to debug my process, what tools are available and which ones the experts use.

davidw• 12 years ago

For those who don't know, this is by the author of:

http://learnyousomeerlang.com/

Which has the same clear, detailed and very approachable writing style.

Erlang really needed a book like this that goes into some of what happens with real, non-toy applications. Hopefully he'll continue to add to it!

For what it's worth, LYSE is one of the few paper books I've purchased in recent years - it's really good, and very clearly a labor of love.

qohen• 12 years ago

Hopefully he'll continue to add to it!

The PDF has a version # in the file name -- text.v1.0.1.pdf -- so your hope may well not be in vain :-)

mononcqc7• 12 years ago

This should have been updated to text.v1.0.2.pdf roughly 8 hours ago. I fixed issues with the running header, page numbering, and a few content issues pointed out to me.

rdtsc• 12 years ago

Great work!

BTW Fred is also the author of Learn You Some Erlang For Great Good:

http://learnyousomeerlang.com/

As he put it, a lot of these tips and tricks end up preserved in local company folk tradition and eventually get lost. This way the whole community gets to benefit. Many thanks, Fred!

Some of these things I've seen on Erlang's mailing list. Some saw in Erlang Factory talks, some are mentioned on #erlang channel. But having them in one place is quite nice.

Some more detailed things I like:

* There are a good number of Erlang resources targeting beginners. This one targets advanced users as well.

* Focused on maintenance and debugging. A successful product will always have that aspect. It is often overlooked.

* Nice semantic layout of chapters -- explanation of how things work, then hands-on sections/example sessions, then exercises and open ended questions for further thinking and discussing.

rorydh3• 12 years ago

For anyone who's interested in Erlang (or functional programming in general) but thinks it looks a bit daunting, check out Elixir.

It's a new language which has just turned 1.0, has Ruby/Python like syntax and runs on the Erlang OTP VM (kind of like how clojure runs on the JVM). This gives you all of the amazing concurrent power which has helped the Heroku guys here.

Check it out!: http://elixir-lang.org/

j_s• 12 years ago

Also review previous discussions of Elixir for pointers to additional resources:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8007383 (july)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7622280 (april)

mononcqc7• 12 years ago

For anyone who's interested in Elixir (or functional programming in general) but thinks it looks a bit daunting, check out Erlang.

It's a stable production language which has just turned 17.3, has extensive resources, and runs on its own VM (kind of like how Java runs on the JVM). This gives you all of the amazing concurrent power which has helped the Heroku guys here.

Check it out!: http://erlang.org/

jlouis• 12 years ago

I love a good troll :)

I'd say: evaluate both and pick what suits you.

findjashua• 12 years ago

Yes, but Elixir gives you some awesome things (on top of everything available in Erlang obviously) - macros, Ecto (LINQ for Postgres) and pipe operator are my top 3.

NB: I don't use it at work or anything, just read up on it during free time.

rorydh3• 12 years ago

Haha! That's very true.

The reason I'm promoting elixir instead is because I feel that it's easier to pick up in terms of how different it is from imperative and OO languages.

While you are right in how Erlang has a much longer reputation, it's odd though how it hasn't gained much popularity like other languages that have been around for that long.

MCRed3• 12 years ago

As an elixir programmer who loves erlang, programming elixir is programming erlang (compiles down to the same thing). It makes some things a lot easier than they are in erlang- a lot- and syntax is just one of them.

But the really are, in a fundamental way, the same "language".

Elixir is just a lot easier for newbies, and rubyists.

I think it's prettier and more fun, which is why I choose it, but I switch to erlang when needed, and regularly use erlang libraries in my elixir projects.

nox_6• 12 years ago

When two languages have different scoping rules, they don't have the same semantics. When two languages differ in their opinion about macros, they don't have the same semantics.

When two languages have different semantics, they are different languages.

And finally, when two languages have fundamentally different syntaxes, the idioms promoted by their creators differ, and thus problems are solved in different ways.

They are not fundamentally the same language, no.

jflatow• 12 years ago

Wow, Fred has been providing a massive service to the community. It's great to see someone continually producing high quality, open source, technical prose (for Erlang).

MetaCosm• 12 years ago

Wow -- I consider this "The Missing Manual" for Erlang production developers. A lot of this you learn over time -- as you work on production systems, but this will cut down the pain significantly.

Nice to see another boon to the community come from Fred.

chillericed2• 12 years ago

This is awesome, I can't wait for this to go into print, so I can pay you for your work! But in the meantime, many thanks for writing this.

mononcqc7• 12 years ago

It is pretty much never going to be printed. The book has to remain available for free and never for profit according to the deal I've taken internally with Heroku to work on it.

The only way it gets printed is if Heroku decides it feels like allocating time and resources getting this printed by working with a publisher, which is way outside our usual line of work there.

I don't see the incentive for the corporation to do this, financially or otherwise.

chillericed2• 12 years ago

Ok, I'll more copies of learnyousomeerlang instead :)

saryant• 12 years ago

Wouldn't it be pretty easy to make it available on Lulu.com or something?

aeden• 12 years ago

I read the online version of LYSE and it really helped me understand the language and how to use it. Additionally you've helped answer questions along the way and have always been a big contributor to the community.

I've just bought a hard copy of LYSE to say thanks. I own almost no physical books these days, but you are worth it. Thank you!

evgen• 12 years ago

Any chance it could be made available in HTML format? Converting to epub is much easier that way...

eddd• 12 years ago

Can i buy mobi version somewhere?

mononcqc7• 12 years ago

Nope. Not for sale. Always for free.

I will be looking into whether it's possible to do decent conversions from LaTeX -> [epub, mobi] later this week, and then figure out how to make that available, if it goes well.

FraaJad2• 12 years ago

pandoc: http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/

See example: https://github.com/karlseguin/the-little-redis-book [The little Redis book, written entirely using pandoc]

user_name2• 12 years ago

A great testimonial

hackerboos• 12 years ago

Joe Armstrong approves:

https://twitter.com/joeerl/status/512575633122021377

Stuff Goes Bad: Erlang in Anger

Related Stories