Erlang/OTP 27 Highlights

Reading about Erlang always feels like getting messages from an alternate dimension where we as an industry made much better choices in the 90s about how we write distributed software.

Really like the new Erlang 27 docs <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.erlang.org&#x2F;doc&#x2F;readme.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.erlang.org&#x2F;doc&#x2F;readme.html</a>

Hyped about json becoming a first class citizen. As an Elixir engineer and daily Jason user it will be great to rely on stdlib functionality. Jason is great, regardless!

I think I’m going to just break down and learn erlang. I’ve been interested in it for awhile but mostly work in f#. I recently started looking at gleam but I don’t think learning it with no knowledge of OTP is a good idea.

Just mentioning gleam <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gleam.run&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gleam.run&#x2F;</a> which is a typed (and very opinionated) languages that runs on the BEAM

The `maybe_expr&#x27; meta pattern matching fallback mechanic is nice, and can surely help avoid a lot of boilerplate code while simultaneously encapsulating the logic in a structure which is easy to read and reason about. It&#x27;s also not a thing in any other programming language I&#x27;ve learned- C, Java&#x2F;Scala&#x2F;C#&#x2F;C++, Go, Javascript, Tcl, Bash(lol), PHP, Forth, ML, and so on.<p>I had to look up it&#x27;s usage though, because I&#x27;m new to both Erlang&#x2F;BEAM and Elixir.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;chiroptical.dev&#x2F;posts&#x2F;2024-03-04-erlang-maybe_expr.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;chiroptical.dev&#x2F;posts&#x2F;2024-03-04-erlang-maybe_expr.h...</a>

I really appreciate that this software has been under continuous development, maintenance and improvement for so long. Its nice to see such long term support, no better way to preserve engineering insights, than continuing to use them in production.

JSON is a big one, great job Erlang folks!

&gt; The Erlang&#x2F;OTP documentation before Erlang&#x2F;OTP 27 was authored in XML<p>ouch

I love the new documentation site: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.erlang.org&#x2F;doc&#x2F;apps&#x2F;stdlib&#x2F;lists#duplicate&#x2F;2" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.erlang.org&#x2F;doc&#x2F;apps&#x2F;stdlib&#x2F;lists#duplicate&#x2F;2</a><p>Looks a lot like Elixir&#x27;s. The previous one was functional, but a little barebones. A little colour, hyperlinking and syntax highlighting goes a long way. Also, navigation seems to be improved. I always lost my way navigating across Erlang modules to find a specific function.<p>The entire Erlang&#x2F;OTP ecosystem got a boost of mind share with the explosion in popularity of Elixir, and it&#x27;s so nice to see it improve at breakneck pace [1], with some cross-pollination between Erlang itself and Elixir. The ideas of Armstrong, Virding and Williams are in many ways far ahead than a lot of mainstream languages, and they were long overdue a revival under the spotlight.<p>Keep up the good work!<p>1: yet, it&#x27;s still the most rock-solid platform to build services upon, and you can quote me on that.