For a long time, the world of Erlang programming had only one book—The Book,1 released in 1993 and revised in 1996. Fanatics can still find it in print, at a price of over $100. A decade or so after its publication, The Book was getting long in the tooth, to say the least. The language had evolved to include several new and powerful programming constructs. Higher-order functions, list comprehensions, and the bit syntax are found everywhere in modern Erlang programs but weren't described in The Book. But the most notable omission was the Open Telecom Platform (OTP), Erlang's application development framework, which was first released in 1996. Erlang was rather easy to learn; OTP wasn't, and early adopters like Martin Logan, who started using Erlang in 1999, pretty much had to learn it the hard way through trial and error.
Concurrent programming has become a required discipline for all programmers. Multi-core processors and the increasing demand for maximum performance and scalability in mission-critical applications have renewed interest in functional languages like Erlang that are designed to handle concurrent programming. Erlang, and the OTP platform, make it possible to deliver more robust applications that satisfy rigorous uptime and performance requirements.
Erlang and OTP in Action teaches you to apply Erlang's message passing model for concurrent programming--a completely different way of tackling the problem of parallel programming from the more common multi-threaded approach. This book walks you through the practical considerations and steps of building systems in Erlang and integrating them with real-world C/C++, Java, and .NET applications. Unlike other books on the market, Erlang and OTP in Action offers a comprehensive view of how concurrency relates to SOA and web technologies.
This hands-on guide is perfect for readers just learning Erlang or for those who want to apply their theoretical knowledge of this powerful language. You'll delve into the Erlang language and OTP runtime by building several progressively more interesting real-world distributed applications. Once you are competent in the fundamentals of Erlang, the book takes you on a deep dive into the process of designing complex software systems in Erlang.
