[erlang-questions] Onboarding programmers who are new to Erlang

[Daniel Pezely]

Having facilitated this type of learning curve many times, it ultimately comes down to holding someone's interest.

Give them a driving problem to solve that is relevant and interesting to them, and a resourceful person will find ways to teach themselves.

That said, for Erlang specifically, I've given these recommendations and caveats:
  1. Start with Learn You Some Erlang-- low barrier to entry, and it's just what you need to get into the material.
  2. Get Armstrong's 2nd Edition-- more thorough for explaining *why* things are the way they are.
  3. Go through the "4 day course" http://www.erlang.org/course/course.html

It doesn't have to be sequential; in fact, I'd suggest taking a break from one to begin the next and interleave the material to keep it fresh.  

But everyone learns differently.  Some would do better by following screencasts as their starting point.  Others should begin by shadowing someone with more experience or getting a tour of existing code for which they already understand something about its user-facing features.

-Daniel

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dpezely@REDACTED


________________________________________
From: erlang-questions-bounces@REDACTED [erlang-questions-bounces@REDACTED] on behalf of Leonard Boyce [leonard.boyce@REDACTED]
Sent: Thursday, August 28, 2014 9:47 AM
To: Erlang-Questio.
Subject: [erlang-questions] Onboarding programmers who are new to Erlang

I'd like to tap the collective wisdom of the group for their
experiences in onboarding fresh-out-of-college programmers who are new
to Erlang. This is assuming the new programmer has mostly imperative
experience (C/C++/Java) and have had a fleeting glimpse of functional
through Haskell.

I'm of the mindset to have them work through a book or two over the
1st couple of weeks with plenty of rubber ducking and/or pairing on
simple exercises.

After that maybe have them work on a simple feature or two in some
prototypical work we're doing on the side, and of course sending them
off to the first available 'bootcamp'/training session available.

What have you found is the best way to introduce them to the language
and bring them up to a level where they can start standing on their
own feet?

Are there any specific resources (books/sessions/tutorials etc) you've
found useful in the past?

Any other recommendations?

Thanks,

Leonard
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