What exactly is Erlang/OTP?

8
votes

I cannot find a clear definition of what Erlang/OTP is and what purpose does it serve. Can anyone give a brief introduction to what it is and what it does?

On erlang/otp, it says

Erlang is a programming language used to build massively scalable soft real-time systems with requirements on high availability. Some of its uses are in telecom, banking, e-commerce, computer telephony and instant messaging. Erlang's runtime system has built-in support for concurrency, distribution and fault tolerance.

OTP is set of Erlang libraries and design principles providing middle-ware to develop these systems. It includes its own distributed database, applications to interface towards other languages, debugging and release handling tools.

1
erlangotp
Perhaps you can clarify what exactly you are looking for? The description you copied is actually a very good brief description to Erlang and OTP. – Adam Lindberg
Sorry the question is a bit vague because I am not exactly sure what's the right thing to ask (I have never looked at Erlang before). I think I want to find out what makes Erlang OTP important in terms of the benefits that it brings. – domp
Maybe you find this description more helpful: learnyousomeerlang.com/what-is-otp – helios35
Hey, domp. It looks like you are familiar with ruby and rails. I am an erlang beginner, and as yet I have not used OTP, but in my mind I think that OTP must be similar to rails in that OTP provides a way to structure your erlang programs, allowing you to take advantage of the wisdom of great erlang programmers. – 7stud
Thank you for your help guys. – domp

1 Answers

21
votes

You actually have your answer in the question

First Erlang is a programming language, Examples of other programming languages

  • Go
  • Python
  • Ruby

A programming language is a special language programmers use to develop applications, scripts, or other set of instructions for computers to execute.

Second OTP is a set of tools and libraries the one can use when building applications written in erlang

In programming, a library is a collection of already compiled code that a programmer can use in his program. Libraries are particularly useful for storing frequently used code.

Now OTP stands for Open Telecom Platform, While this is strange name to call a set of libraries, this name most due to the fact that the Erlang programming language was designed at the Ericsson Computer Science Laboratory. So OTP is the name of the erlang standard library, so while the name contains the term telecom the library is not about telecom anymore