From: Adam A.G. Shamblin Date: Mon, 3 Jun 2019 01:13:59 +0000 (-0600) Subject: Erlang in Irvine article X-Git-Url: https://git.vexinglabs.com/?a=commitdiff_plain;h=26a0f9b7f23b171b73aa4567f5bc85d78da0a316;p=letters.git Erlang in Irvine article --- diff --git a/content/erlang-training.md b/content/erlang-training.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..dc6ec82 --- /dev/null +++ b/content/erlang-training.md @@ -0,0 +1,57 @@ +Title: Erlang in Irvine +Date: 2019-06-02 +Category: Programming +Tags: programming, erlang + + +If I were keeping score, so many points were earned over the last week, if not +by me than by my team. I just returned from a three-day training seminar on the +basics of the Erlang programming language, taught by [Szymon +Mentel](https://twitter.com/szymonmentel) of [Erlang +Solutions](https://www.erlang-solutions.com/). The program was truly an +introduction, carrying the class, in this case a group of my coworkers, from +Hello World thru concurrency, with an introduction to distributed programming. +It was an excellent tutorial and I'd recommend it to anyone interested. + +I've been working on the internet for a long time, long enough that some of my +favorite languages and technologies aren't really used that much anymore (sorry +Apache and Perl). Because I was a Perl programmer in the late 90's, I read a +lot fo writing by its charismatic and prolific designer, Larry Wall. Larry would +write at length about where the various Frankenstein pieces of the language came +from. This mean dives into Common LISP, Prolog, you name it, and I became a bit +of a language nerd. Not a language Alpha-nerd - I want to be careful about what +I claim about myself - but at the very least a neophyte nerd. + +Anyway, it's been a while since I've dug into a new language with thoughts of +actually using it. Typescript was more of a shift than learning a new language. +Rust and Go are fine but haven't yet captured my imagination. But this opportunity +to pick up some Erlang has me pretty jazzed, to the surprise of my colleagues as +it isn't something new and sexy, but a language that was introduced more than +thirty years ago. + +I currently work in the internet voice and video domain, specifically in what is +being called Unified Communications. Erlang has it's roots in +telecommunications, so it is no surprise that a number of applications in our +space are built upon it. There is one project in particular that we will be +relying upon a great deal in the coming months, such that we will need to +deviate from the established project roadmap to meet our own business needs. + +So, when I was talking about _earning points_ at the beginning of this post, +here's what I mean: + +Our team is being encouraged to: + +1. Learn an exotic and powerful language - _10 points_ +1. so that we can contribute to an open source project - _10 points_ +1. and better participate in the open source community - _20 points_ + +This is very exciting! Since I got started in technology, embracing and +contributing to open source has been a highly regarded, hacker ideal - even if +our corporate overlords were resistant. To be able to do this while also +learning a language and technology quite different than those I've typically +employed - this should be a very interesting summer! + +I also have a side project related to my past work using +[batman-adv](https://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki) on Raspberry +Pis. Erlang's constructs for binary pattern matching and easy task distribution +should be amazing for message passing over a mesh.