Programming languages

Erlang

Erlang is a general-purpose, concurrent, functional programming language, as well as a garbage-collected runtime system. It was built by Ericsson to support distributed, fault-tolerant, soft-real-time, non-stop applications. Erlang's runtime system allows it to be used in several telecom and soft real-time applications.

Share this starting point code.study/erlang
Created by
Joe Armstrong , Robert Virding , Mike Williams
First appeared
1986
Official resource
Visit the main website

Your first program

Hello, World!

Erlang
-module(hello).
-export([world/0]).

world() -> io:fwrite("Hello, World!\\n").

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Teach me the basics of Erlang. Use https://code.study/erlang as the starting point. Explain what Erlang is best suited for, when I should not choose it, how to install or try it, and then walk me through its Hello World example step by step.

Content reviewed August 2026 · Start with primary sources and verify version-specific details.