[fresleven]

I think I may be more representative of the camp complaining about erlang's syntax. My background is as a sysadmin without CS training, with only prior experience using ruby, python, and shell scripting.

It took me about four months of hard studying for erlang to click. I think it was due to learning some CS fundamentals (e.g. had never heard of a tuple before, never seen multiple dispatch), learning functional programming fundamentals (had never used a purely functional language before - unless you count bash), and had never looked at prolog. Finally, I was simultaneously exposed to new concepts of concurrency, pattern matching, etc.

I think what happened was that the unusual syntax is the easiest thing to blame for the resulting confusion, because it's the surface layer you engage with.

[vezzy-fnord]

Ah, that would make sense. I already had some knowledge of general computing "culture" before learning Erlang, so I did not stall much on the broader concepts. Erlang is more heterodox, so it's likely the ideas could be an initial obstacle.

[asib]

> e.g. had never heard of a tuple before

You never encountered tuples in python?