I really wanted to start off with a language and I contemplated many languages such as Python and Ruby for this particular project that I have in mind.  I needed concurrency and SMP support out of the box as one of the features.  I did not however needed any sort of graphics or anything but a high performance server app that constantly dumps and reads data from a database.

And so I decided to learn Erlang.

Most of the books that I’m referring to are talking about how I should have some sort of experience in Java or C.  I have neither, but just some scripting experience in Windows and Unix. I totally think that this is going to be a huge challenge to learn a functional language without any experience in traditional programming languages such as C, Java or even C#. I think I’m going to give my best to understand functional languages and Erlang.  I think if it doesn’t go well, then I think I have to turn to Java or C to understand programming in general and create a few simple programs to get my feet in the water.

But I’m also intrigued by the idea of learning Erlang as it is and take it as a challenge.  Obiviously I’m going to be reading a lot and talking with people on irc channels such as #erlang and #erang-otp at freenode.

Although I have books to read, I’m starting off here at this website http://www.learnyousomeerlang.com/

I will keep you all posted on the progress of what I’m learning.

-jp