[erlang-questions] looking for good tutorials (newbie)

Miles Fidelman mfidelman@REDACTED
Mon Feb 6 16:11:24 CET 2012


Hi Folks,

I'm struggling through the process of learning Erlang, and I'm wondering 
if anybody can point to some favorite tutorials.

Not so much the basics (functional programming, tail recursion - which 
takes time to wrap one's head around, but is fairly tractable) but more 
at the application development level - how to conceptualize a problem 
from a concurrent point-of-few (vs. a procedural or object-oriented 
view), and then proceed through development, test, packaging, and 
deployment.  There's lots of stuff like that for object-oriented 
practice, but not-so-much for Erlang.

There's some pretty good stuff in both Armstrong's book, and in the book 
by Cesarini and Thompson - but I'd really like to find something that 
works through the nitty gritty from problem statement -> top level 
design (what processes, protocols, etc.) -> code -> debugging -> 
packaging -- with a graphical presentation (maybe it's just me, but when 
thinking about concurrency, pictures of interacting processes and 
message flows works a lot better than sequential, textual presentation 
of code snippets).

Also details of how to use different tools to debug parallel 
interactions.  The User's Guides and Reference Manuals are well and good 
- but more useful after you know what you're looking for - not as useful 
for thinking through a test/debug strategy, or an approach to a specific 
crash.

In the Smalltalk world, I came across this: 
http://squeak.preeminent.org/tut2007/html/ -- wondering if anybody has 
seen something comparable for Erlang.

So... just wondering if anybody has seen a good powerpoint deck or two 
along these lines.

Thanks very much,

Miles Fidelman

-- 
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is.   .... Yogi Berra





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