[erlang-questions] Erlang for a SMTP server?

[Garry Hodgson]

<calmasy@REDACTED> wrote:

> I'm still new to Erlang, so bear with me if this is a dumb question.
> Basically, I'm being tasked to write a simple SMTP proxy
...
> It must be
> ultra scalable, supporting upwards of thousands of concurrent
> connections.  Is Erlang a good choice for such a task?

erlang is an excellent choice for something like this.  a word of advice:
if you're looking to build a production quality service, make sure you 
build it on top of otp, rather than rolling your own.  otp can seem a little
daunting when you're first starting erlang, but it's well worth the effort if
you're building serious systems.  the docs are pretty good, and there 
are some good tutorials around now.  i wish i'd gone this route when i started.
would've saved me a lot of effort, and resulted in a much better system.

> The other
> platforms I'm looking at are stackless Python and Twisted Python, but
> Erlang seems like it might be a more natural choice.

if for some reason you can't use erlang, twisted is a very nice framework
for building network servers.  i can't speak to its scalability, though.  no
experience with that.


----
Garry Hodgson, Senior Software Geek, AT&T CSO

But I'm not giving in an inch to fear
'Cause I promised myself this year
I feel like I owe it...to someone.