Programming Books

Excellent Free Books to Learn Erlang

Last Updated on May 23, 2024

Erlang is a general-purpose, concurrent, declarative, functional programming language and runtime environment developed by Ericsson, a Swedish multinational provider of communications technology and services. Erlang is dynamically typed and has a pattern matching syntax. The language solves difficult problems inherent in parallel, concurrent environments. It uses sets of parallel supervised processes, not a single sequential process as found in most programming languages.

Erlang was created in 1986 at the Ellemtel Telecommunication Systems Laboratories for telecommunication systems. The objective was to build a simple and efficient programming language resilient large-scale concurrent industrial applications.

Besides telecommunication systems and applications and other large industrial real-time systems, Erlang is particularly suitable for servers for internet applications, e-commerce, and networked database applications. The versatility of the language is, in part, due to its extensive collection of libraries.

The language is released under an open source license, initially the Erlang Public License, now supplanted by the Apache License 2.0.


1. Erlang Handbook by Bjarne Däcker, Robert Virding

Erlang Handbook

The Erlang Handbook is a concise summary of the language features and the runtime system. Readers don’t need to wade through a large body of text; the book is only 46 pages. A good introduction to the world of Erlang.

It’s aimed at people with some programming experience, serving as a quick introduction to the Erlang domain.

The book was originally written by Bjarne Däcker and subsequently revised by Robert Virding.

The book focuses on the following areas:

  • Structure of an Erlang program – offers a brief introduction to module syntax, module attributes, comments, character set, and reserved words.
  • Data types – unary data types, compound data types, escape sequences, and type conversions.
  • Pattern matching – variables and pattern matching.
  • Functions – function definition, function calls, expressions including Boolean expressions, compound expressions, guard sequences, tail recursion, funs, and built-in functions.
  • Processes – examines process creation, registered processes, process communication, process termination, monitors, process priorities, and process dictionary.
  • Error handling – deals with error handling within a process. Such errors are known as exceptions.
  • Distributed Erlang – looks at nodes, node connections, hidden nodes, cookies, distribution built-in functions, distribution command line flags, and distribution modules.
  • Ports and Port Drivers.
  • Code loading.
  • Macros.

This text is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License. The handbook is typeset using LaTeX.

Read the book


2. Études for Erlang by J. David Eisenberg

Etudes for Erlang

Études for Erlang provides descriptions of programs that you can write in Erlang.

The programs are typically short, and each one is designed as practice material for a particular Erlang programming concept.

These programs have not been designed to be of considerable difficulty, though they may ask the reader to stretch a bit beyond the immediate material and examples that are found in the book Introducing Erlang.

Example programs cover:

  • Functions and Modules.
  • Atoms, Tuples and Pattern Matching.
  • Logic and Recursion.
  • Strings.
  • Lists.
  • Higher Order Functions and List Comprehensions.
  • Processes.
  • Handling Errors.
  • Storing Structured Data.
  • Getting Started with OTP.
  • Solutions.

This book is released under an open source license.

Read the book


3. Stuff Goes Bad: Erlang in Anger

Stuff Goes Bad: Erlang in AngerThis book intends to be a little guide about how to be the Erlang medic in a time of war.

It is first and foremost a collection of tips and tricks to help understand where failures come from, and a dictionary of different code snippets and practices that helped developers debug production systems that were built in Erlang.

The first three chapters explore writing applications:

  • How to Dive into a Code Base.
  • Building Open Source Erlang Software.
  • Planning for Overload.

The next three chapters focus on diagnosing applications:

  • Connecting to Remote Nodes.
  • Runtime Metrics.
  • Reading Crash Dumps.
  • Memory Leaks.
  • CPU and Scheduler Hogs.
  • Tracing.

The book is published under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Read the book


Next page: Page 2 – Learn You Some Erlang for great good and more books

Pages in this article:
Page 1 – Erlang Handbook and more books
Page 2 – Learn You Some Erlang for great good and more books
Page 3 – Erlang/OTP System Documentation and more books


All books in this series:

Free Programming Books
AdaALGOL-like programming language, extended from Pascal and other languages
AgdaDependently typed functional language based on intuitionistic Type Theory
ArduinoInexpensive, flexible, open source microcontroller platform
AssemblyAs close to writing machine code without writing in pure hexadecimal
AwkVersatile language designed for pattern scanning and processing language
BashShell and command language; popular both as a shell and a scripting language
BASICBeginner’s All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code
CGeneral-purpose, procedural, portable, high-level language
C++General-purpose, portable, free-form, multi-paradigm language
C#Combines the power and flexibility of C++ with the simplicity of Visual Basic
ClojureDialect of the Lisp programming language
ClojureScriptCompiler for Clojure that targets JavaScript
COBOLCommon Business-Oriented Language
CoffeeScriptTranscompiles into JavaScript inspired by Ruby, Python and Haskell
CoqDependently typed language similar to Agda, Idris, F* and others
CrystalGeneral-purpose, concurrent, multi-paradigm, object-oriented language
CSSCSS (Cascading Style Sheets) specifies a web page’s appearance
DGeneral-purpose systems programming language with a C-like syntax
DartClient-optimized language for fast apps on multiple platforms
DylanMulti-paradigm language supporting functional and object-oriented coding
ECMAScriptBest known as the language embedded in web browsers
EiffelObject-oriented language designed by Bertrand Meyer
ElixirRelatively new functional language running on the Erlang virtual machine
ErlangGeneral-purpose, concurrent, declarative, functional language
F#Uses functional, imperative, and object-oriented programming methods
FactorDynamic stack-based programming language
ForthImperative stack-based programming language
FortranThe first high-level language, using the first compiler
GoCompiled, statically typed programming language
GroovyPowerful, optionally typed and dynamic language
HaskellStandardized, general-purpose, polymorphically, statically typed language
HTMLHyperText Markup Language
IconWide variety of features for processing and presenting symbolic data
JArray programming language based primarily on APL
JavaGeneral-purpose, concurrent, class-based, object-oriented, high-level language
JavaScriptInterpreted, prototype-based, scripting language
JuliaHigh-level, high-performance language for technical computing
KotlinMore modern version of Java
LabVIEWDesigned to enable domain experts to build power systems quickly
LaTeXProfessional document preparation system and document markup language
LispUnique features - excellent to study programming constructs
LogoDialect of Lisp that features interactivity, modularity, extensibility
LuaDesigned as an embeddable scripting language
MarkdownPlain text formatting syntax designed to be easy-to-read and easy-to-write
Objective-CObject-oriented language that adds Smalltalk-style messaging to C
OCamlThe main implementation of the Caml language
PascalImperative and procedural language designed in the late 1960s
PerlHigh-level, general-purpose, interpreted, scripting, dynamic language
PHPPHP has been at the helm of the web for many years
PostScriptInterpreted, stack-based and Turing complete language
PrologA general purpose, declarative, logic programming language
PureScriptSmall strongly, statically typed language compiling to JavaScript
PythonGeneral-purpose, structured, powerful language
QMLHierarchical declarative language for user interface layout - JSON-like syntax
RDe facto standard among statisticians and data analysts
RacketGeneral-purpose, object-oriented, multi-paradigm, functional language
RakuMember of the Perl family of programming languages
RubyGeneral purpose, scripting, structured, flexible, fully object-oriented language
RustIdeal for systems, embedded, and other performance critical code
ScalaModern, object-functional, multi-paradigm, Java-based language
SchemeA general-purpose, functional language descended from Lisp and Algol
ScratchVisual programming language designed for 8-16 year-old children
SQLAccess and manipulate data held in a relational database management system
Standard MLGeneral-purpose functional language characterized as "Lisp with types"
SwiftPowerful and intuitive general-purpose programming language
TclDynamic language based on concepts of Lisp, C, and Unix shells
TeXMarkup and programming language - create professional quality typeset text
TypeScriptStrict syntactical superset of JavaScript adding optional static typing
ValaObject-oriented language, syntactically similar to C#
VHDLHardware description language used in electronic design automation
VimLPowerful scripting language of the Vim editor
XMLRules for defining semantic tags describing structure ad meaning
Subscribe
Notify of
guest

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

0 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments