Can anyone recommend a primer to Erlang?

Question

I've recently found myself getting more and more interested in Erlang.

I've purchased a book (Programming in Erlang) and started reading up on the basics. Reading books is time consuming so I am looking to shortcut this a bit and go back to the book later.

What I lack is a good introductory tutorial. Kind of like, hands on, this is what you need to get started in Erlang, these are best practices, this is how you organize code and this is how you do a small project.

I've googled this topic extensively and haven't had much luck. ;)

Answer 1

This one is a very simple tutorial, but you can learn a lot :) http://spawnlink.com/ . Give it a try.

Answer 2

I used this to start,

Then tried this (PDF).

and eventually bought this.

They are all adequate to get started.

You need to browse the reference manual for a fuller overview of what is available.

The real key is to sit down and start writing stuff, until the erlang philosophy clicks in your head.

good luck.

Since then, I found this link. It is useful, if you want a light tutorial driven intro

Answer 3

The bible is Programming Erlang: Software for a Concurrent World, written by the creator of Erlang, Joe Armstrong. Code for the book is available here.

Answer 4

Partial answer: for the directory/file structure guidelines you can refer to this question

Answer 5

A recent blog post that features links to a number of Erlang blogs: http://adam.blog.heroku.com/past/2008/9/27/erlang/

I also recommend Programming Erlang: Software for a Concurrent World which I recently read.

Answer 6

Slides

I had the opportunity to go to session about Erlang at the Barcamp in Berlin.

Here are the slides (sans commentary): http://www.slideshare.net/guesta3202/erlang-introduction-bcberlin3-presentation

(All credit to Florian Ebeling.)

Screencast

I've found something else in the meantime:

http://www.pragprog.com/screencasts/v-kserl/erlang-in-practice

Screencast, starting with basics. I have not yet downloaded them but I will and also update this question.

Online tutorial

The other day I discovered learnyousomeerlang.com. A beginner tutorial for everyone who's new to this language.

Answer 7

It looks like a community site has been set up as a repository for Erlang tutorials, articles, and cookbook entries at trapexit.org.

I recognize that you are just asking for tutorials, but the web looks pretty thin right now on good Erlang material. Posting some back might save others from going through as much aggravation as you are.

Answer 8

Try http://learnyousomeerlang.com - learn you some erlang inspired from the haskell one

Answer 9

I started with reading Mitchell Hashimoto's Spawn Link , and I've yet to see a better starting point for someone who wants to quickly dive in.

Later on I progressed to Joe Armstrong's book "Programming Erlang: Software for a Concurrent World". Another book, "Erlang Programming" by Cesarini and Thompson, was recently published and I slightly prefer it to Joe's book, but either are a good introduction.

"Learn You Some Erlang" is a promising yet incomplete tutorial.

My advice though is to just blast through Joe's book, it really won't take all that long. You'll end up saving time in the long run since you'll spend less time stumbling around on the basics.

Answer 10

Wanted to get my thoughts out for others who are trying to learn and use Erlang having a similar career background as mine. All along in my career, i've learnt and applied several "procedural" languages (PP) starting with C,C++,Python,Lua,C# and some java. Once you've understood the basics through one of these languages it is easy to learn the other since they are all based on same fundamental principles of programming language design.

Now Erlang basically a Functional Programming (FP) language was some thing I was not exposed or used to before in my career. FP radically requires a different style of thinking from PP. So if this is your first FP like myself, don't buy a book that teaches you the Erlang (or say other FP) language as it will not get you far. As you to start to do serious programs with FP after learning some language basics ,your brain will naturally resist this different style of thinking and you'll either feel hard to continue and/or quit. You'll feel very warm and happy along with others to bash FP/Erlang.

To be comfortable and learn FP naturally it is better to understand the foundation of this FP which is lambda calculus. Lambda may look even weird on first sight, feel dizzy for quite a while but once you get a hang of this and solve couple of lambda calculus problems you'll now find your style of FP thinking. So my suggestion in one line is

Start with Lambda Calculus if this is your first functional programming.