Long Time No Write

It’s been a while since I’ve written anything here, and (sadly) a long time since I’ve taken any time to focus on Erlang. I’d like to rectify both of these deficencies, so here’s a first stab.

First off, I’d like to drum up another Provo Erlounge for October 9th at 7PM (MST). We can meet at the Open Source Technology Center again (we’re supposed to have wireless access at that point). There are a couple of routes we can go, either hitting the Concurrent Programming and Distributed Programming chapters from Programming Erlang: Software for a Concurrent World or walking through some ‘real world’ Erlang code. Anyone have a request/suggestion for us?

Secondly (and more generally), I’ve recently been talking with a publisher about their entry into the Functional Programming world. They’re very interested in doing this, and seem to have a good plan. They haven’t settled on which language(s) they want to cover yet, but Erlang is on their list. They would like feedback on which languages, potential topics, and potential authors would be of interest. If you’d like to leave a comment here, I’d be happy to pass the information along. If you’re worried about other publishers mining the information (but, hey, that would just mean more potential books on Erlang and FP wouldn’t it?), feel free to email me directly.

And now, it’s off to spend a little time with Erlang.

Successful Provo erlounge

Well, we got our Utah Valley Erlang group started with a bang—11 enthusiasts showed up (I hesitate to say hackers because most of us are newbies). We had a quick review of Erlang’s history and problem domain, and took a look at some code (the webput.erl example). A couple of folks also got Erlang installed on their laptops.

It wasn’t a bad start, but we’re not nearly done. We’ll be meeting from 7-9PM on the second Tuesday of every month going forward. The Open Source Technology Center has been kind enough to offer us meeting space—they even provided Pizza and soda this time around. For our June meeting, we’re each going to try our hand at writing some Erlang (something that will be run cooperatively over our laptops), then we’ll do a ‘show and tell’/code review. If I can just think of something interesting, but not too hard, it should be a lot of fun.

If you’re interested in joining us please do, we’d love the company. We plan on coordinating our meetings on the erlang-questions list unless we get to big/noisy/rowdy for it.