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Learn you some Erlang for great good!
Erlang is the language of choice for programmers who want to write robust, concurrent applications, but its strange syntax and functional design can intimidate the uninitiated. Luckily, there’s a new weapon in the battle against Learn You Some Erlang for Great Good!
Erlang maestro Fred Hébert starts slow and eases you into the You’ll learn about Erlang’s unorthodox syntax, its data structures, its type system (or lack thereof!), and basic functional programming techniques. Once you’ve wrapped your head around the simple stuff, you’ll tackle the real meat-and-potatoes of the concurrency, distributed computing, hot code loading, and all the other dark magic that makes Erlang such a hot topic among today’s savvy developers.
As you dive into Erlang’s functional fantasy world, you’ll learn
–Testing your applications with EUnit and Common Test
–Building and releasing your applications with the OTP framework
–Passing messages, raising errors, and starting/stopping processes over many nodes
–Storing and retrieving data using Mnesia and ETS
–Network programming with TCP, UDP, and the inet module
–The simple joys and potential pitfalls of writing distributed, concurrent applications
Packed with lighthearted illustrations and just the right mix of offbeat and practical example programs, Learn You Some Erlang for Great Good! is the perfect entry point into the sometimes-crazy, always-thrilling world of Erlang.
Erlang maestro Fred Hébert starts slow and eases you into the You’ll learn about Erlang’s unorthodox syntax, its data structures, its type system (or lack thereof!), and basic functional programming techniques. Once you’ve wrapped your head around the simple stuff, you’ll tackle the real meat-and-potatoes of the concurrency, distributed computing, hot code loading, and all the other dark magic that makes Erlang such a hot topic among today’s savvy developers.
As you dive into Erlang’s functional fantasy world, you’ll learn
–Testing your applications with EUnit and Common Test
–Building and releasing your applications with the OTP framework
–Passing messages, raising errors, and starting/stopping processes over many nodes
–Storing and retrieving data using Mnesia and ETS
–Network programming with TCP, UDP, and the inet module
–The simple joys and potential pitfalls of writing distributed, concurrent applications
Packed with lighthearted illustrations and just the right mix of offbeat and practical example programs, Learn You Some Erlang for Great Good! is the perfect entry point into the sometimes-crazy, always-thrilling world of Erlang.
593 pages, Paperback
First published September 29, 2012
88 people are currently reading
780 people want to read
About the author
Fred Hebert
3books53followersFred Hebert is the author of 3 Erlang books and a bunch of blog posts. He co-founded and is a board member at the Erlang Ecosystem Foundation.
He works as Staff SRE at Honeycomb.io. Previously, he was a staff developer at Postmates, with a focus on learning from incidents and poking at various things. Earlier, he was Systems Architect at Genetec, a company offering security video and IoT integration systems. Even earlier, he was a principal member of technical staff on the Heroku platform, worked in real-time bidding, and provided Erlang training.
He works as Staff SRE at Honeycomb.io. Previously, he was a staff developer at Postmates, with a focus on learning from incidents and poking at various things. Earlier, he was Systems Architect at Genetec, a company offering security video and IoT integration systems. Even earlier, he was a principal member of technical staff on the Heroku platform, worked in real-time bidding, and provided Erlang training.
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Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews
December 25, 2014
Absolutely awesome.
Finally a book that has made me think about the insane effort of work that has to be put to make it happen - I'm truly impressed. It is not an "one stop go" book for Erlang -> sometimes it goes a bit too fast, sometimes it focuses more on principles than teaching the actual syntax, but ... it's great: you can check syntax details in any other resource easily, but it's much harder to get a good resource on design principles that have made Erlang creators to make particular decisions.
What did I like most?
The OTP part in general - authors aim not just to show what OTP is about, but also to present *why* it has been shaped that way. That may sometimes cause some confusion, because same problems are solved in a different way, but well, no-one have said that you don't have to pay attention while reading, right? ;)
What I didn't like?
Ok, it's not necessarily something I'd call a "typical kind of drawback", but the truth is - this book needs a lot of focus & effort. Reading it once will NOT make you an Erlang programmer, well, it won't even provide you a smooth start. But still, I feel much better when I start writing Erlang code when I know I have this book at my side to aid me when I'm lost :) (even if it's NOT a typical "reference" style of read).
Highly recommended for anyone interested in Erlang. I totally realize that I may never use this knowledge in commercial conditions, but it was worth the time.
Finally a book that has made me think about the insane effort of work that has to be put to make it happen - I'm truly impressed. It is not an "one stop go" book for Erlang -> sometimes it goes a bit too fast, sometimes it focuses more on principles than teaching the actual syntax, but ... it's great: you can check syntax details in any other resource easily, but it's much harder to get a good resource on design principles that have made Erlang creators to make particular decisions.
What did I like most?
The OTP part in general - authors aim not just to show what OTP is about, but also to present *why* it has been shaped that way. That may sometimes cause some confusion, because same problems are solved in a different way, but well, no-one have said that you don't have to pay attention while reading, right? ;)
What I didn't like?
Ok, it's not necessarily something I'd call a "typical kind of drawback", but the truth is - this book needs a lot of focus & effort. Reading it once will NOT make you an Erlang programmer, well, it won't even provide you a smooth start. But still, I feel much better when I start writing Erlang code when I know I have this book at my side to aid me when I'm lost :) (even if it's NOT a typical "reference" style of read).
Highly recommended for anyone interested in Erlang. I totally realize that I may never use this knowledge in commercial conditions, but it was worth the time.
February 5, 2013
I first learned Erlang reading Joe Armstrong's Programming Erlang: Software for a Concurrent World book in 2008, and started working fulltime with the language that year. As each major book on the language came out I read them in turn, and with each book I've picked up new things. This book is no exception.
I first encountered some of the Learn You Some Erlang contents via the web page in 2010, but only read the first few chapters and at that point I didn't see much other than a novel take on the basics of the language. I recommended the website to new Erlang developers but didn't read it myself until the book was finished.
Upon reading the completed work, I found that Fred Hebert has not only covered the basics of the language and its syntax, but many of the details which make Erlang *the* language to build distributed, fault-tolerant systems. I learned many new things about OTP behaviours, releases, eunit and common test as well as many other corners of the language and runtime.
Fred Hebert's breadth of knowledge, attention to detail, sly wit and many entertaining examples give everyone from the beginner, to the expert something to think about and learn from in this book. I recommend it to anyone looking to learn more about the exciting world of Erlang.
I first encountered some of the Learn You Some Erlang contents via the web page in 2010, but only read the first few chapters and at that point I didn't see much other than a novel take on the basics of the language. I recommended the website to new Erlang developers but didn't read it myself until the book was finished.
Upon reading the completed work, I found that Fred Hebert has not only covered the basics of the language and its syntax, but many of the details which make Erlang *the* language to build distributed, fault-tolerant systems. I learned many new things about OTP behaviours, releases, eunit and common test as well as many other corners of the language and runtime.
Fred Hebert's breadth of knowledge, attention to detail, sly wit and many entertaining examples give everyone from the beginner, to the expert something to think about and learn from in this book. I recommend it to anyone looking to learn more about the exciting world of Erlang.
November 2, 2013
The following review contains snippets from . Consult that review for full details.
On the writing: Fred's style is breezy without being flaky or muddle-headed. His examples are often comical, sometimes thought-provoking and yet always salient and to the point. His jokes keep the tone light and allow him to sneak difficult concepts that your brain would traditionally reject as "too hard" past your defenses so that you often learn in spite of what you think you can do. This is exactly the kind of writing that beginners need when facing a language that's as "weird" as Erlang.
On the code: This is a book that's jam-packed with code. The code directly illustrates the points being made in the text. Because Erlang is so concise in syntax, however, compared to languages like C++, Java, etc. you never get the feeling from this book as you do from so many others that the code is filler designed to bulk up the page count. It's over 600 pages in length, but I do not feel, while reading it, that I've been ripped off by bulking code. Instead I get well-written technical explanations interlaced with appropriately-sized snippets of code to illustrate things.
On the author's moral voice: That's actually a thing in LYSE: sidebar content that is headed "Don't Drink Too Much Kool-Aid". Far too many technical books (including the book which inspired this one) read as if they're written by uncritical fanbois with limited experience of other ways of thinking. (This may or may not be the case in actuality, but it's the way they read.) Fred, on the other hand, litters his book with warnings that you shouldn't view Erlang as a programming panacea; that perhaps sometimes other languages or other approaches may, in fact, be a better choice than Erlang. This lends the text some moral authority as well as technical authority, in my opinion, and is a valuable part of the text.
On the book's quirkiness: This book is not an academic textbook, nor is it a "professional" technical manual (where "professional" seems to be equated with "mind-numbingly boring" in most circles). The tone is chatty. There are jokes throughout the work (Chapter 15 is entitled "Rage Against the Finite-State Machines" for example) and it is liberally illustrated with Fred's slightly warped cartoons.
Summary:
Should you buy this book? I'm going to have to give this a qualified "yes". If any of the following criterion match, you should not buy this book:
1. You wrote the Erlang compiler or large parts of the OTP infrastructure.
2. You have been programming large-scale Erlang applications for a decade or more.
3. You think technical books should be dry like Knäckebrot and are morally wounded by chatty works as a result.
4. You find cartoonish drawings of squid with an incorrect number of tentacles so distracting you can't take the paired technical work seriously.
Pretty much anybody else who is interested in Erlang will find something in this book that is both useful and enjoyable to read.
October 25, 2020
Another Erlang book for my collection.
This one takes its time to explain every point. So if you like to go fast and furious, that's not it. Also, because I read some other books (ok, "book") about Erlang, some topics felt a little bit boring, 'cause I did get the point already.
Also, it seems this books also suffer from the "let me use the shell to explain this point". It's not that bad when you want to show a point in the very beginning and then just drop it ('cause, you know, you won't use the shell as part of your application -- you may use as a helper to figure out when things go haywire, but not as a default tool) but not when you're near the middle of the book explaining some important topic, like supervisors.
But, at the same time, some topics that the other books (ok, "book") completely ignored, like "how do you build, package and deploy an Erlang application".
But yeah, the "using shell for important stuff" really annoyed me.
This one takes its time to explain every point. So if you like to go fast and furious, that's not it. Also, because I read some other books (ok, "book") about Erlang, some topics felt a little bit boring, 'cause I did get the point already.
Also, it seems this books also suffer from the "let me use the shell to explain this point". It's not that bad when you want to show a point in the very beginning and then just drop it ('cause, you know, you won't use the shell as part of your application -- you may use as a helper to figure out when things go haywire, but not as a default tool) but not when you're near the middle of the book explaining some important topic, like supervisors.
But, at the same time, some topics that the other books (ok, "book") completely ignored, like "how do you build, package and deploy an Erlang application".
But yeah, the "using shell for important stuff" really annoyed me.
September 30, 2019
The "Learn You..." Series is batting 1.000.
November 29, 2016
Skimmed through a lot of the parts since I've read most of the contents in other Elixir books already (especially Programming Elixir, Elixir in Action and The little OTP guide book).
Never the less, this book has it all. It covers nearly everything you need in order to get started in the Erlang world, has a very well put together path trough all topics, great examples (I see where the other books got their inspiration from) and overall a good, humorous writing style.
I will go back to this book whenever I have to deal or interface with "raw" Erlang.
Never the less, this book has it all. It covers nearly everything you need in order to get started in the Erlang world, has a very well put together path trough all topics, great examples (I see where the other books got their inspiration from) and overall a good, humorous writing style.
I will go back to this book whenever I have to deal or interface with "raw" Erlang.
June 24, 2019
Ok, I have to admit.
I am totally amazed by this book, It one of the best programming books I read until now, it explains not only Erlang as a language but also Concurrency, Distributed systems (a bit but a great start) and OTP as a platform. It shows you good practices and also explains WHY it's a good practice. Yep, I am amazed and I am impressed, this is was a fun adventure. If you are interested in Erlang, Elixir, OTP or concurrency patterns & distributed ones, just start reading this book.!
I am totally amazed by this book, It one of the best programming books I read until now, it explains not only Erlang as a language but also Concurrency, Distributed systems (a bit but a great start) and OTP as a platform. It shows you good practices and also explains WHY it's a good practice. Yep, I am amazed and I am impressed, this is was a fun adventure. If you are interested in Erlang, Elixir, OTP or concurrency patterns & distributed ones, just start reading this book.!
November 7, 2020
I feel i must start with a statement :
This is hands down THE BOOK for anyone interested in learning Erlang.
Even though Erlang as an ecosystem (language , platform) is huge , the author did a terrific job in separating it in some big sections:
-basic erlang (syntax), BIF's (processes, links and monitors, refs,exceptions...) ,OTP and its behaviours ,deployments, distribution, testing, dyalizer and much more
The book is written in an entertaining and humoristic manner. It is heavy on explanations , tips and complete code examples (top down approach usually).
The only drawback to this book is that as a developer after writing my first app i found the build toolchain used in the book is no longer the preffered option by the Erlang community .The new way of building your apl is via a tool named rebar which i found not that straightforward for me. I wished the author would cover it also.
Aside from this little impediment the book is great and i recommend it to anyone interested in Erlang !
This is hands down THE BOOK for anyone interested in learning Erlang.
Even though Erlang as an ecosystem (language , platform) is huge , the author did a terrific job in separating it in some big sections:
-basic erlang (syntax), BIF's (processes, links and monitors, refs,exceptions...) ,OTP and its behaviours ,deployments, distribution, testing, dyalizer and much more
The book is written in an entertaining and humoristic manner. It is heavy on explanations , tips and complete code examples (top down approach usually).
The only drawback to this book is that as a developer after writing my first app i found the build toolchain used in the book is no longer the preffered option by the Erlang community .The new way of building your apl is via a tool named rebar which i found not that straightforward for me. I wished the author would cover it also.
Aside from this little impediment the book is great and i recommend it to anyone interested in Erlang !
August 2, 2017
It's a very thorough introduction to Erlang. Includes a lot of technical details, but is never boring because of the playful writing style.
A bit different from its Haskell-equivalent though, which is much more of a whirlwind tour of the language. Learn You a Haskell forgoes a lot of the technicalities involved in actually shipping the product, which Learn You some Erlang discusses in quite a lot of detail.
A bit different from its Haskell-equivalent though, which is much more of a whirlwind tour of the language. Learn You a Haskell forgoes a lot of the technicalities involved in actually shipping the product, which Learn You some Erlang discusses in quite a lot of detail.
October 16, 2022
Very disappointing. The book has a lot of information, but uses way too many words to convey that information. General style, and also formatting and layout choices, are dreadful. The author is not doing his job.
December 30, 2019
One of the best programming book I've ever read especially if you're doing Elixir programming.
February 9, 2022
I like the not that serious language, but sometimes I feel like too much, and would prefer more direct descriptions.
But the content is quite well organized and it has a good level of deepness.
But the content is quite well organized and it has a good level of deepness.
September 10, 2013
LYSE is a really good book for getting into Erlang. Fred Hebert goes from elementary material to some fairly advanced topics. I always felt that I had a good understanding of what was going on and it's credit to the material for building a good progression. The author did mention some topics he didn't cover like profiling that I would have liked to have read about, but at nearly 600 pages, it's probably a good thing that he stopped.
Want to read
May 10, 2013Fantastic book to get a handle on Erlang.
June 20, 2013
Clearly，good book!
July 20, 2016
Отличная книга для начинающих!
Простая подача информации помогает не бояться Erlang'a, а забавные иллюстрации помогают быть в хорошем настроении. :)
Простая подача информации помогает не бояться Erlang'a, а забавные иллюстрации помогают быть в хорошем настроении. :)
September 9, 2014
great book, good examples and interesting to read.
August 10, 2016
Hands down the best introduction to Erlang.
Not only does it give you the basics, but it goes well into more advanced topics. I still regularly consult this book when programming.
Not only does it give you the basics, but it goes well into more advanced topics. I still regularly consult this book when programming.
August 5, 2014
learned me some erlang for great good; fred hebert is a groovy dude whose work introduced me to erlang, my personal favorite language that ive worked with so far.
April 4, 2017
This book is huge and amazing! Awesome way to start learning Erlang...funny, interesting and full of examples...a must read!
April 30, 2015
Отличная книга для старта в Erlang'е. Описываются азы языка + в конце раскрываются такие темы, как "Распределенные OTP приложения", работа с Mnesia, Common Test и т.д.
August 2, 2016
Excellent introduction to Erlang, OTP, and the entire Erlang ecosystem. Written in an engaging and humorous style.
December 9, 2017
Great for learning about distributed systems, concurrency with the actor model, and functional programming. Provides a radical and more robust take on error handling as well.
August 18, 2017
Nice book on Erlang. Best for programmers who want to start with or switch to Erlang.
Want to read
December 25, 2017Learn You Some Erlang for Great Good! is a hilariously illustrated guide to the concurrent functional programming language. As you laugh along with Hebert’s brilliantly quirky drawings, you’ll effortlessly pick up this complex language and have fun while you’re at it..
Read
March 20, 2019Great book! Very pleasant introduction into whole super powerful Erlang ecosystem!
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