Erlang (programming language): Difference between revisions

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Revision as of 22:31, 15 December 2022

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==History==

The name ''Erlang'', attributed to Bjarne Däcker, has been presumed by those working on the telephony switches (for whom the language was designed) to be a reference to Danish mathematician and engineer [[Agner Krarup Erlang]] and a [[syllabic abbreviation]] of "Ericsson Language".<ref name="hopl"/><ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.erlang.org/pipermail/erlang-questions/1999-February/000098.html |title=Erlang, the mathematician? }}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=https://foldoc.org/Erlang |title=Free Online Dictionary of Computing: Erlang }}</ref> Erlang was designed with the aim of improving the development of telephony applications.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://erlang.org/course/history.html|title=History of Erlang|website=Erlang.org}}</ref> The initial version of Erlang was implemented in [[Prolog]] and was influenced by the programming language [[PLEX (programming language)|PLEX]] used in earlier Ericsson exchanges. By 1988 Erlang had proven that it was suitable for prototyping telephone exchanges, but the Prolog interpreter was far too slow. One group within Ericsson estimated that it would need to be 40 times faster to be suitable for production use. In 1992, work began on the [[BEAM (Erlang virtual machine)|BEAM]] virtual machine (VM) which compiles Erlang to C using a mix of natively compiled code and [[threaded code]] to strike a balance between performance and disk space.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Armstrong |first=Joe |title=The development of Erlang |journal=ACM SIGPLAN Notices |date=August 1997 |volume=32 |issue=8 |pages=196–203 |doi=10.1145/258948.258967 |isbn=0897919181 |s2cid=6821037 }}</ref> According to co-inventor Joe Armstrong, the language went from lab product to real applications following the collapse of the next-generation [[AXE telephone exchange]] named [[:sv:AXE-N|''AXE-N'']] in 1995. As a result, Erlang was chosen for the next [[asynchronousAsynchronous transferTransfer modeMode]] (ATM) exchange ''AXD''.<ref name="hopl"/>

[[File:Robert Virding and Joe Armstrong, 2013.jpg|thumb|Robert Virding and Joe Armstrong, 2013]]