

Ask HN: Learning Erlang from scratch - pierrefar

I've been reading a lot about how wonderful Erlang is. So I'd like to learn Erlang properly from scratch.<p>Any books/websites/docs/whatever is greatly appreciated. I've started reading the official documentation but it's not very friendly. I want something that starts from the basics, through to the syntax through to deployment. I'm sure one resource will cover all this so anything you may have is welcome.<p>Thanks!
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qhoxie
<http://www.pragprog.com/titles/jaerlang/programming-erlang>

No question. Written by the author of the language.

It has lots of great practical examples and walks you through everything from
start to finish.

<http://www.trapexit.org> also has some really nice tutorials and discussion.

~~~
babo
It's an amazing book, a rare example of well balanced content. Highly
recommended.

~~~
tdavis
This.

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gqwu
1) read all courses in <http://www.erlang.org/course/course.html> then do the
exercises in <http://www.erlang.org/course/exercises.html>

2) read official Getting Started manual
<http://erlang.org/doc/getting_started/part_frame.html>

3) learn about erlang OTP
<http://www.erlang.org/doc/design_principles/part_frame.html>

4) this book is a MUST get! "Programming Erlang: Software for a Concurrent
World" by Joe Armstrong <http://www.pragprog.com/titles/jaerlang/programming-
erlang>

good luck!

~~~
pierrefar
Thanks! The courses look really good.

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balpreetspankaj
A few days ago, I was looking at this presentation on Erlang presented at one
of Google Tech Talk. This was my first introduction to Erlang and I found it
very informative.

[http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=240707194662243675&#...</a>

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damienkatz
The best way to learn any language is to build stuff. Build something you
think is cool. Allow yourself to suck at it and do everything wrong. Then
build it again, or build something else cool.

~~~
pierrefar
Agreed 100%. I have an idea that I want to build with Erlang.

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tdupree
After seeing it referenced a lot on HN, I've also been really interested in
learning Erlang.

What projects have you fellow hackers used/are using Erlang for? Are you glad
you did?

~~~
RKlophaus
I just published a screencast demo of a web framework that I made in Erlang,
called Nitrogen.

See <http://nitrogen-erlang.tumblr.com>

Also, the technology behind my startup company, Stitcho.com is in Erlang. See
<http://www.stitcho.com>

I would definitely recommend it, especially if you are one of those people who
really stretches a language. Once you get past the new syntax, it is very
quick to learn.

~~~
phr
RKlophaus: Your stitcho.com site needs to tell the reader more about why they
need Stitcho -- on the first page.

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tlrobinson
Bob Ippolito (who wrote mochiweb, a webserver written in Erlang) did an
introductory talk last year:
[http://bob.pythonmac.org/archives/2008/03/08/exploring-
erlan...](http://bob.pythonmac.org/archives/2008/03/08/exploring-
erlang-c41-video/)

~~~
pierrefar
Video is always good. Thanks!

~~~
tlrobinson
I should also mention I found this one a little more engaging than the Google
Tech Talk one.

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tlrobinson
I don't know Erlang and I haven't read this, so I can't vouch for it, but I
came across this book:

<http://www.erlang.org/download/erlang-book-part1.pdf>

~~~
phr
That's the first Erlang book, and is very good. Unfortunately, it's out of
print, or was the last time I checked, but might be available used. It's very
good for wrapping your head around programming with pattern matching, single
assignment, and message passing concurrency, but light on the OTP, since, I
believe, it was written before much of today's OTP was written. Think of it as
the book the writers of OTP must have used to learn how to write OTP.

If you can find a used copy, grab it. I bought mine when it was still in
print, and wouldn't part with it.

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jfarmer
I wrote a few Erlang tutorials was I was learning:
<http://20bits.com/tag/erlang/>

The public documentation for the language is awful.

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voodootikigod
We did it as part of a group and found that to be highly advantageous. I
recommend finding someone near you who is also interested in learning Erlang
and work through it together.

