Erlang for .NET Developers
O.J. Reeves (@TheColonial) and I are currently drafting a manuscript with the working title “Erlang for .NET Developers”. The goal of the book is to save skilled .NET developers a month of wheel-spinning when they start learning Erlang. A good software developer should be at an advantage when adopting a new language, but most language intro books are targeted at a general audience. They can’t leverage your black belt C# skills or your thorough understanding of design patterns. Also, most books can’t tell you what baggage you’re likely to bring as a .NET developer or how to lose your C# accent. There are a handful of Erlang books (all excellent), and we will recommend that our readers buy them. We will assume our readers already have those and we will focus mainly on the C# to Erlang bits.
Here’s a basic outline of the book so far:
- Intro
- Intended Audience
- Why Erlang for .NET shops?
- How does a C# developer even get started?
- What is similar, and what is truly foreign?
- Can it all be done on Windows?
- What are the development tools?
- From static-typed and Object-Oriented to dynamic and functional
- Translation: Jon Skeet and Francesco Cesarini walk into a bar
- What baggage does a good C# developer bring to Erlang?
- How do you begin to lose your C# accent?
- Bringing Erlang to your .NET shop
- How should a .NET shop pilot Erlang?
- What are the best interop strategies?
We are basing the book on questions we had when we started learning Erlang. We are also collecting questions from the community. If you are in the target audience for this book, please send your questions. We will do our best to answer them even if they don’t fit in the book.
One way I intend to flesh out material for the book is through weekly, quick-and-dirty screencasts. If you would like a walk through of something send me a note.
#1 by Sven at November 30th, 2011
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Nice – how can I get informed, when it’s released? I’ve alreade subscribed so many feeds, I might simply overlook the entry in your blog…
#2 by Bryan Hunter at December 1st, 2011
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Thanks Sven! I’ve added you to a list of interested folks. We will send a note when we get to the “exciting news” phase of this adventure. Don’t hesitate to throw questions at us in the meantime.
#3 by Tormod at April 2nd, 2012
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Definitely interested.
I hope for some cool “offload-into-Erlang” stories. The street cred of Erlang cannot be denied, but the story includes how unsuited it is for productive GUI work.