RIP Joe Armstrong, the author of Erlang


Sad news from the world of programming, Joe Armstrong, one of the authors of the Erlang language has died

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.

Comments

  1. says

    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.