20 years of open source Erlang: #OpenErlang Interviews with Co-Creators Robert Virding & Joe Armstrong

Erlang Solutions
Aug 31, 2018 · 4 min read

Erlang has been open sourced since 1998 and this year marks the 20th anniversary. We’ve been celebrating with parties, conferences, webinars, meetups and other delicious content so far.

To celebrate this milestone we kicked off with launching a new family of tech conferences called Code Sync — do you remember Erlang Factory San Francisco and Erlang User Conference in Stockholm? As from 2018, Code Sync consolidates all the conferences that we’ve been organising since 2008 retaining their individual personalities and focuses. So if you are on a look out for Erlang Factory or EUC — check Code BEAM conferences aimed at ‘Discovering the Future of the Erlang Ecosystem’.

Shortly after we kicked off with a party in March held in San Francisco in partnership with TigerConnect, and then we continued with our Stockholm party in May where we’ve partnered with WhatsApp, Ericsson and aeternity. Taking the Erlang Party around the world!

These two epic #OpenErlang parties invited local communities for an evening of 1998 flashback. It was great seeing old friends, and welcoming a large number of new faces too. So yes, the Erlang and Elixir community continues to grow, getting more followers and vibrancy year by year… Next party will be held in London on 8th November and we will share more info in the upcoming weeks.

We also partnered with a great number of Erlang and Elixir enthusiasts on a series of #OpenErlang webinars that we are rolling out throughout this year. The next one is coming up in September with Ben Marx from Bleacher Report.

And next up is our exclusive #OpenErlang Interview Series with some of the biggest names within the Erlang, Elixir and Open Source community. We’ve been all working hard behind the scenes and we are finally ready to share some great personalities, stories and uses of Erlang that even Robert, Joe and Mike never dreamed of when creating the language!

So what better individuals to kick of the interview series with than the co-creators of Erlang?

Two-thirds of the Erlang Creator Dream Team Robert Virding and Joe Armstrong talk their favourite topic…Erlang!

From how Erlang developed into a programming heavyweight to the benefits of the language becoming open sourced, Robert and Joe share their highlights over the past 20 years including the community it has created and how important it is to a number of huge global companies.

To BEAM, or not to BEAM, there is no question!

#OpenErlang; 20 Years of Open-Sourced Erlang

Erlang was originally built for Ericsson and Ericsson only, as a proprietary language, to improve telephony applications. It can also be referred to as “Erlang/OTP” and was designed to be a fault-tolerant, distributed, real-time system that offered pattern matching and functional programming in one handy package.

Robert, Joe and Mike were using this programming language at Ericsson for approximately 12 years before it went open sourced to the public in 1998. Since then, it has been responsible for a huge number of business big and small, offering massively reliable systems and ease of use.

About Robert

Robert Virding is one-third of why Erlang exists; along with Joe Armstrong and Mike Williams, Robert developed Erlang in 1986 and continued to use it solely at Ericsson before the language was released as open sourced in 1998.

Robert originally worked extensively on improving garbage collection and functional languages but has since developed his entrepreneurial spirit having began the first Erlang startup — Bluetail.

The co-creator was an early member of the Ericsson Computer Science Lab and currently works as the Principal Language Expert at Erlang Solutions, as well as a keen speaker and educator.

About Joe

Robert’s partner in crime over the last 3–4 decades is Joe Armstrong. He too has an eye for business, having debugged programs in exchange for beer whilst studying at University College London.

Along with Robert Virding and Mike WIlliam, he developed the programming language Erlang in 1986 at the Ericsson Computer Science Lab.

Joe is the author of a number of key books on the topic of Erlang and beyond this including Concurrent Programming in Erlang, Programming Erlang: Software for a Concurrent World and Coders At Work.

As part of our #OpenErlang celebrations, we’ve been interviewing key influencers behind the language, and those who have had a key involvement in the process of making Erlang open sourced and a key programming language of over the past 20 years. Keep your eyes peeled each week as our key influencers of Erlang give exclusive interviews regarding the programming language and its development over the last few decades.

If you’re interested in contributing and collaborating with us at Erlang Solutions, you can contact us at general@erlang-solutions.com.

At work with the boss breathing down your neck? Or don’t want to be one of those playing videos out loud on public transport?

To watch the video and view the full transcript, head to the Erlang Solutions blog.

Erlang Solutions

Written by

World-class solutions for issues of scale, reliability & performance. Passionate about Erlang & Elixir. MongooseIM & WombatOAM creators. Also RabbitMQ experts!

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