Erlang Programming: A Concurrent Approach to Software Development

by Francesco Cesarini, Simon Thompson

This book is an in-depth introduction to Erlang, a programming language ideal for any situation where concurrency, fault tolerance, and fast response is essential. Erlang is gaining widespread adoption with the advent of multi-core processors and their new scalable approach to concurrency. With this guide you'll learn how to write complex concurrent programs in Erlang, regardless of your programming background or experience.

Written by leaders of the international Erlang community -- and based on their training material -- Erlang Programming focuses on the language's syntax and semantics, and explains pattern matching, proper lists, recursion, debugging, networking, and concurrency.

This book helps Erlang Programming provides exercises at the end of each chapter and simple examples throughout the book.

Genres: Programming, Computer Science, Technology, Software, Nonfiction, Programming Languages, Computers

496 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2009

Reviews

[Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very lucid and approachable. I saw parallels between the book's presentation of Erlang's processes as actors, and the more common object-oriented style of programming. I have always believed in preventing "inappropriate intimacy" between parts of a program, but this book gave me a better understanding of how to make programs truly modular; even if I never had an occasion to use Erlang, I would still say that this book make me a better programmer.

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cesarini explains Erlang in a reasonably approachable way. Some of the chapters are great but others leave much to be desired. I really enjoyed exploring a functional programming language and a different way of thinking about code, however, the project structure of larger Erlang projects looks a bit chaotic. I understand that an Erlang program can scale from a performance level, but I wonder if it scales from a project management level.

[Adrian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Amazing resource for learning Erlang.Well written , modular , tackling all Erlang programming aspects from: basic syntax , bits , concurrency, data structures, behaviours to complex subjects such as Mnesia , Distributed Erlang , TCP , hell , even GUI , introp with C/Java .

The best chapter from my point of view was the erlang debugging tools. I have yet to see so much effort put in a chapter like in this book.Debugging is fundamental in any language but when running in a distributed , fault tolerant environment it becomes a MUST to quickly see the problem at hand.

I was a bit put off that the author did not include a chapter for web programming , at least some basic API design since it is the bread and butter for a web developer.


All in all a really solid read !

[Christopher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Working through this made me feel as though I'd learned Erlang, and I had no problem figuring out some other folks' existing code and adding to it based on that experience. So I reckon it was a pretty good book in practical terms, even if it's not a shining beacon of insight into all things functional or concurrent.

[Gert · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good book. I still often refer to it when I'm writing Erlang.
Well written, well structured. Doesn't go very deep into OTP, but this was not the focus of this book. Highly recommended.

[Mahmoud · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a reference for software craftsmanship and excellence in general.

It touches on fundamental subjects of building software, most importantly software the evolves and lasts. Covering theory and practice hand in hand in hand.

Nevertheless through the extremely powerful Erlang language lens.

The last 5 chapters are of special importance and this is the only drawback. As they are very rich and condensed and would have been better if they were separated in a dedicated book.

One of the few technical books that I read cover to cover without boredom

[Bharat · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fantastic book that details everything about Erlang from syntax to the VM and Process emulation, Concurrency primitives available, message passing, gen_server, OTP, debug monitoring etc. A reference book that should be ideally read after starting off from Joe Armstrong's Programming Erlang and mastering the basics of Erlang syntax. The exercises in this book are also great and worth practising to solidify Erlang basics. Totally recommend this.

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Книга немного сложна для начала, поэтому её следует читать уже после изучения основной мат.части языка.

Рассмотрена работа с Mnesia, Dialyzer'ом, тестирование через EUnit, создание GUI через wxErlang, горячей замене кода и даже взаимодействие с другими языками программирования (Java, C, Ruby).

Скудно рассмотрена тема работы с OTP библиотекой.

[Fyodor Ustinov · Rating 5 out of 5]

Отличная книжка, как минимум для начала.

[zlu · Rating 5 out of 5]

practical introduction, great beginner book

[Zach Moazeni · Rating 4 out of 5]

The best resource I've found for erlang.

[Dave Peticolas · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a nice complement to the Armstrong book. In particular, it has a great discussion of the Erlang tracing mechanisms.