
Ask HN: Who is interested in a book about high performance Erlang? - robinson_k
I wrote an article how to learn Erlang by example [1] which got a lot of good feedback recently when it was posted on HN. Thanks for the good feedback! :)<p>The past weeks I am working on finding bottlenecks and try to improve the performance of Erlang Open Source projects.<p>Based on my findings and insights I was asking myself if you would be interested in a book about way to measure and improve Erlang performance. Like my blogpost it would use real world examples, this time from more Open Source Erlang projects.<p>What do you think?<p>Best,
Robert<p>[1] http:&#x2F;&#x2F;robert-kowalski.de&#x2F;blog&#x2F;lets-learn-erlang-and-fix-a-bug-on-a-couchdb-cluster&#x2F;
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houshuang
Very interested. Mostly working in Elixir, but very interested in idiomatic
ways of using messages, supervisors, genservers, etc etc. Haven't yet had a
chance to scale beyond a single server, but would love to learn about that as
well.

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nailer
I've gotten into Erlang because of Elixir. I didn't realise any other systems
people cared about syntax design before. I'd love to learn anything about FP
or using patterns from dist systems / telco worlds to scale web apps using
Elixir / Phoenix.

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Scuds
There is Erlang In Anger by Fred Hebert as a starting point
[http://www.erlang-in-anger.com/](http://www.erlang-in-anger.com/)

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brweber2
I would also be interested. I'm less interested in the open source examples
and more interested in the techniques and options that are available.

Huge bonus if it takes Elixir into account.

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boringnoise
Robert, do you plan to find those bottlenecks and then explain how to remove
them by using Erlang/OTP best practices? (i.e. approaches used by Klarna,
WhatsApp, etc.).

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dbasner
I'd love to read that! I'm new to errand but found your method of teaching
erlang by fixing a real bug in a real project to be incredibly interesting and
useful!

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dudul
I would be interested. Even though I'm moving to Elixir I'm sure most of the
best practices can be ported.

~~~
arca_vorago
Same here, I have been trying to get into Elixir and am skipping doing Erlang
first, but I'm sure I'm going to have to go back and review Erlang principles
more in depth as I progress.

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wunki
Would buy it! Just picking up Erlang and loving it so far. Would love to learn
more on performance as well.

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josep2
I'd buy it. Doing some Erlang and Elixir stuff at the moment and need as many
tips as I can get.

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regularfry
Definitely. The ins-and-outs of how binaries and GC interact are particularly
interesting to me.

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farresito
This book hasn't been released yet, but it seems quite interesting and might
be useful: [http://www.amazon.com/Erlang-Run-Time-System-Erik-
Stenman/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/Erlang-Run-Time-System-Erik-
Stenman/dp/1449362125)

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mendozao
I'm really interested in a Fundamentals of Erlang video course

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simoncion
Do you prefer videos to well-written prose with examples? If so, why?

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crimsonalucard
I think there's more interest in learning it from scratch.

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weatherlight
Would this translate well to Elixir? If so, I'd buy it!

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dpeck
I'd buy it. Hell I'd pre-order it.

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Scramblejams
Add me to the list of willing customers.

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ludwig
Where is the preorder page? :)

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gnuwilliam
I'd buy it!

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jake_morrison
I would buy it

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joewrong
+1 would buy.

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dizzy3gg
bet365.

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jules
I would not write performance sensitive code in Erlang, so no. I'd be more
interested in a book about distributed programming than a book about
optimization.

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davelnewton
I'm pretty sure the things where Erlang _is_ a good fit would be the target,
no? E.g., it's not going to be about doing your numerical computation--but it
might be about using it to distribute it.

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jules
Isn't that what I said? That was what I tried to convey in any case.

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simoncion
I also interpreted your post in the way that davelnewton did. I guess the
thing to remember is that even the slowest systems can have both "high
performance" and "low performance" ways of using them.

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jules
I guess, but in my experience optimization buys you maybe 2x if the code was
written reasonably well. By using Erlang you leave 3x-30x on the table vs
reasonably well written C, and it's often easier to write that C code than to
optimize the heck out of code in a slower language which ends up being 3x-30x
slower anyway. On the other hand Erlang is an excellent choice for distributed
systems that are latency bound.

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simoncion
If you've decided that Erlang is the right system to use, isn't it good to
know how to -when needed- design the fastest Erlang code possible?

The existence of another language that creates faster programs doesn't make
the task of optimizing software written in the slower language irrelevant.

Make sense? :)

And, I mean, languages like Erlang make writing software to solve certain
classes of problems far easier than if one were using straight C. What's more,
Erlang lets you plug in code written in other languages, so you can keep the
very logically tricky stuff in Erlang, and do the perf-critical stuff in -say-
C.

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jules
I didn't say optimizing Erlang is irrelevant, just that for me a book about
optimizing Erlang is less relevant than a book about writing distributed
systems in Erlang.

