Erlang
Erlang[edit]
Erlang is a general-purpose, concurrent, and functional programming language. It was originally developed by Ericsson in the late 1980s for use in telecommunication systems. Today, Erlang is widely used for building highly scalable and fault-tolerant systems, especially in the field of telecommunications, distributed and concurrent systems, and real-time applications.
History[edit]
Erlang was first developed by Joe Armstrong, Robert Virding, and Mike Williams at Ericsson as a means to address the challenges of concurrent programming in telecommunication systems. The language was named after Danish mathematician and engineer Agner Krarup Erlang.
Over the years, Erlang gained significant popularity for its built-in support for concurrency, error handling, and distributed computing. It became an essential tool for building reliable, fault-tolerant, and highly concurrent systems.
Features[edit]
Erlang offers several key features that make it well-suited for building robust and concurrent applications:
- Concurrency: Erlang provides lightweight processes, also known as actors, which run concurrently and communicate through message passing. This enables efficient utilization of system resources and simplifies concurrent programming.
- Fault-tolerance: Erlang's "let it fail" approach allows developers to build robust systems that can recover from errors without disrupting the overall operation. Supervisors monitor and restart failed processes, ensuring high availability.
- Functional Programming: Erlang is a functional programming language, which means it treats computations as the evaluation of mathematical functions. Pure functions and immutable data structures make programs easier to reason about and test.
- Hot Code Upgrades: Erlang supports seamless code upgrades without service interruption. Running systems can be upgraded with new code while still in operation, ensuring continuous availability.
- Distributed Computing: Erlang provides built-in primitives for building distributed systems. Processes can communicate remotely, enabling the development of fault-tolerant, scalable, and highly available applications.
Use Cases[edit]
Erlang's unique combination of features has made it suitable for a variety of applications, including:
- Telecommunications: Erlang's origin lies in the telecommunications domain, where it has been widely used for building switching systems, telephone exchanges, and network protocols.
- Concurrent and Distributed Systems: Erlang's lightweight processes and message-passing model make it well-suited for building highly concurrent and distributed systems, such as chat applications, multiplayer games, and messaging platforms.
- Fault-Tolerant Systems: Erlang's supervision model and fault-tolerance mechanisms make it a natural choice for developing systems that require high availability and fault tolerance, such as payment systems, banking applications, and real-time monitoring systems.
- Web Development: Erlang is increasingly being used for web development, particularly in areas that require real-time, scalable, and fault-tolerant systems. Frameworks like Phoenix provide a powerful platform for building web applications.
Elixir and Erlang[edit]
Elixir is a dynamic, functional programming language built on top of the Erlang Virtual Machine (BEAM). It provides an alternative syntax and several improvements while leveraging the power and stability of the Erlang ecosystem. Elixir code runs on the same BEAM runtime as Erlang, allowing seamless interoperability between the two languages.
The Elixir ecosystem benefits from Erlang's mature libraries and tools while offering its own unique features and community. Elixir's Ruby-like syntax and focus on developer productivity attract developers who prefer a more expressive and intuitive language.
The synergy between Elixir and Erlang makes it possible to leverage the strengths of both languages, significantly enhancing the development of scalable, fault-tolerant, and highly concurrent systems.
See Also[edit]
- Elixir - Details about the programming language built on top of Erlang.
- OTP - The Open Telecom Platform, a set of libraries and tools for building robust, scalable, and fault-tolerant systems in Erlang and Elixir.
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