[erlang-questions] Erlang first appeared year

[Dmitry Klionsky]

Hi all,

Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erlang_(programming_language) 
states that Erlang
first appeared in 1986, which makes it "old" comparing to Java (1995) 
and C# (2000).
The other day a manager said that some C++ devs mentioned that Erlang is 
"an old language".
I replied that C++, which first appeared in 1985, is even older.

Today I was reading http://blog.erlang.org/beam-compiler-history/ and 
realized that the year
1986 is misleading.

It seems to me, that both Java and C++ have their first public releases 
as first appeared years
and NOT when their design was started. They both have history sections 
mentioning that work on
them was started long before.

Shouldn't we consider OTP R1B in 1996 to be the first release?
This will make Erlang is younger than Java!

I don't propose to cheat, I propose to play the fair game.

Thank you