[rdtsc]

The "actual numbers" are numbers for a lot of numerical code like computing pi digits, spectral norms, n-body simulation. That fact that you show those representative as typical Erlang programs shows that you don't know what typical Erlang programs are used for or just trolling. (And either one of those could result in downvoting).

[davidw]

I know what Erlang is used for (my name appears in the acknowledgements here: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B002L4EXHY/?tag=dedasys-20#reader_B... as a reviewer ), and the language shootout is a convenient benchmark site, nothing more. I never claimed it was anything else, did I?

Ruby isn't exactly a whiz in the number crunching department either: it's significantly slower than Erlang and certainly not 'meant for that', and yet, its code is more concise.

If you are saying Erlang is only concise for problems that it was meant for (and excels at), fair enough.

I'd also say that my preference is for languages that do lots of things pretty well rather than one thing really well and other things not so great. It's frustrating in some ways, because for some things Erlang is absolutely brilliant.