[rvirding]

I think the thing to remember that it all started as an interpreter written in Prolog in which we could develop our ideas on what the real problem was and the right semantics of a system for solving them. As we went along our "language" evolved as well and became less and less Prolog and more functional as we removed much Prolog semantics, added functional "stuff" and developed the final syntax.

We had along the way also looked at concurrent logic languages. So by the time we had a language and design rules how to use it most of Prolog had disappeared, though some of its syntax still remained. This language was, of course, Erlang.

While Prolog was a nice base on which to develop our ideas it was never the language we would have used in real life.

[crymer11]

It’s really delightful that we’re able to get the thoughts of someone who was there and involved in the genesis of the language.

Thank you for all the time you’ve taken to explain the “why” of Erlang!

(For those unfamiliar, go check out “The Erlang Rationale” and some of rvirding’s posts elsewhere, e.g., on the thread at https://elixirforum.com/t/the-erlang-rationale-by-robert-vir...)

[qohen]

If you want more, from someone else who was there, check out Joe Armstrong's "History of Erlang" paper:

https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/1238844.1238850 -- canonical link and has a video of the related talk (streamable and downloadable).

(Sadly, without ACM membership, the paper itself is paywalled; there are copies of it online though, e.g. https://www.labouseur.com/courses/erlang/history-of-erlang-a... ).