Strange? Not sure the title is right, but different certainly. In 1998 I first came across Scheme, one of the Lisp family. It was used as the supporting language to DSSSL as designed by James Clark. I was shaken to the core! I'd not met a functional programming language, recursion was not something I'd ever used. All those lists. After the initial shock I took some time to look at it and began to admire it. Bit like DSSSL, it did easy things easily and wasn't stretched when you wanted to do something hard. My first odd language. Yes, I came from procedural languages (Assembler being my first). I bought a copy of SICP but readily admit I didn't get anywhere near finishing it, read it if you dare! Quite possibly the hardest technical book I've ever picked up.

Anyway, various reasons, I became the owner of this book. Hot off the press, written by someone with the background in Erlang to speak with authority, then acquired a copy of this book. With those two available I've spent some time looking at the language. Again, I'm intrigued. It has all the hallmarks of a well thought out language. Some corners are a bit rough (signs of design by committee), but in general it has some really fascinating aspects. I'm not really sufficiently well versed to speak on them, but I will.

Higher order functions and list comprehensions were covered in one book by me, as part of a Sunday morning session before the family were up for breakfast. Sufficiently well written that I understood it. HOFs I'd come across... as an idea (Dimitre on the XSL list) but this time I was given a definition. List comprehensions I have the idea and like the elegance, though I do want to work with them some more to let the ideas settle. Pattern matching (instead of variable assignment?) is the most intrigueing aspect so far. I'm told it's there in Haskell too. The idea is simple. It's applicable in half a dozen places in the language for a variety of purposes, and makes me chuckle. Message passing is a key aspect of the language. I've played with it, but can't wait to try it across two 'nodes' (my laptop and my desktop machine), using http or tcp/ip.

I'm busy, just couldn't wait to say something about my new toy! erlang.org is home base if you're interested.