Erlang programming
by Francesco Cesarini · first published 2009
53% recommend47% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Practical introduction to Erlang covering the language alongside OTP in depth, with good exercises. Suited as a follow-on to Armstrong's book for readers getting up to speed.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
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…Armstrong's book is probably the best one to start with. It gives you a step-by-step learning process that will get you up and running with Erlang in short order. Once you are finished with it pick up Erlang Programming by Cesarini and Thompson; this book covers a lot of the same territory but goes a bit deeper into some areas that are missing from Armstrong's book (e.g. debugging & tracing, etc.)
on “Ask HN: What are the best technologies you've worked with this year?” ↗For those of you who don't now, Francesco Cesarini is the founder and CTO of Erlang Training and Consulting, and has been a major proponent of Erlang for years, also having co-written the book "Erlang Programming" (http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596518189 - it's a great book, I highly recommend it myself)
on “Ask HN: What have you built with Erlang?” ↗* The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger (audiobook) * Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay (kindle) * Erlang Programming by Francesco Cesarini (rereading mostly because of the excellent exercises)
on “Ask HN: What are you reading right now?” ↗The only book that covers OTP in depth. Cesarini and Armstrong one are equally essential for learning Erlang programming.
on “Erlang and OTP in Action” ↗Erlang and OTP in Action is great for learning about OTP. It's not really the best introduction to Erlang the language itself. I'd recommend Erlang Programming by Cesarini AND Thompson for that. Programming Erlang by Joe Armstrong is good as well.
on “My wife's and my holiday weekend project: A database of intro books” ↗…will immediately point you to Haskell (and totally forget to mention The Haskell Pyramid [1]). I'd advise you to stay away from it until you _want_ to go deeper down the rabbit hole. Play with Elm and Erlang ("Programming Erlang" [2] and "Erlang Programming" [3] books are great) to un-learn imperative patterns, tinker with OCaml to learn a new way to modularize code. [1] https://patrickmn.com/software/the-haskell-pyramid/…
on “What I learned working with a senior engineer as a new grad” ↗FWIW, the new O'Reilly "Erlang Programming" book also seems pretty good (the several chapters I've read, at least). I'm not sure which I would recommend first, though.
I've been reading through the oreilly book, Erlang Programming. Its good (like all Oreilly titles) though I'm only into chapter 6. I'd definitely suggest picking it up.
on “Ask HN: What are the best technologies you've worked with this year?” ↗May I add "Erlang Programming Rules and Conventions": http://www.erlang.se/doc/programming_rules.shtml Going through these might clarify for which kind of programming the language is intended in the first place. And I also recommend…
on “Learning Erlang” ↗…either case, you'll need a good background in linear algebra and probably some calculus before tackling this. Owning both of these would be good if you're going to get into graphics in a serious way. 9) Erlang. Programming Erlang by Joe Armstrong.
on “Ask HN: How would you relearn programming?” ↗After looking into Erlang for a while now (still in chapter 3 of ERLANG Programming by Francesco Cesarini) I have to state that writing something this big in Erlang was bold, really, really bold. Erlang is not really that fun or exciting to use
on “CouchDB 1.0” ↗As a long time Java programmer I recommend these two: http://www.amazon.com/ERLANG-Programming-Francesco-Cesarini/... http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Erlang-Software-Concurrent... Okay, just kidding. =) On a serious note, Effective Java is one of the best out there.
on “Ask HN: Good Java books for aspiring Clojurians?” ↗…and is practically a media file). So he's about 10 times as prolific and I have a hard time demonstrating why my approach might be better until years down the road. On that note I bought O'Reilly's "Erlang Programming" by Cesarini & Thompson, but haven't read much yet. I'm hoping to find a purer language that can give me some leverage to do what I want with concurrency in the near future. Thanks for the advice on…
on “The State of the Art is Terrible” ↗…important to stress you don't need them to learn Erlang, but they will make your learning Erlang easier. Erlang in Practice by Kevin Smith - From all accounts a very good series of screencasts on Erlang Erlang Programming by Francesco Cesarini and Simon Thompson Erlang and OTP in Action by Martin Logan, Eric Merritt, and Richard Carlsson Building Web Applications with Erlang: Working with REST and Web Sockets on Yaws 7.…
on “Ask HN: What is the best way to learn Erlang?” ↗…real Erlang code base. And when you see it, it will not be "littered". It's an exception, not an idiom. And those samples from Joe's book and thesis are just snippets with no context. BTW, O'Reilly's "Erlang Programming" doesn't even provide such an example. Edit: One example when I do use this pattern is constructing proplists for some function calls.
on “Erlang for Skeptics” ↗