Sad news from the world of programming, Joe Armstrong, one of the authors of the Erlang language has died
It is with great sadness that I share news of Joe Armstrong’s passing away earlier today. Whilst he may no longer be with us, his work has laid the foundation which will be used by generations to come. RIP @joeerl, thank you for inspiring us all.
— Francesco Cesarini (@FrancescoC) April 20, 2019
I never worked much with Erlang, and have never met Joe Armstrong, but from everything I hear, he was a genuinely nice man.
If you want to know more about Erlang, and how it was used, you can watch Erlang the Movie.
To be honest, I highly doubt anyone outside the world of programming will get much out of that clip, but it is interesting to watch, since it shows what type of problems Erlang was developed to solve. It gives a view into the early days of digitizing telephony, which wasn’t that long ago, considered how long telephones and other forms of telecommunication has been around.
That is indeed sad news. I haven’t used Erlang myself but I have read Armstrong’s PhD thesis on its development (there are some intriguing ideas in it) and his interview in the “Coders at Work” book. Like you say, he seems to have been a nice guy and he will be missed.