Joe Armstrong

Sadly, I have to report that Joe Armstrong, creator of Erlang, has died.

Joe was a giant of the industry. I’ll particularly remember him as an advocate for Prolog. He frequently encouraged programmers in his circle to learn Prolog, and freely acknowledged that Erlang descends from Prolog.

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Sad news indeed.

Here are two links to eulogies posted to the Erlang Questions newgroup:

https://ferd.ca/goodbye-joe.html
https://jlouis.github.io/posts/joe-goodbye/

And here’s what Richard O’Keefe wrote in the same newsgroup:

What? Joe Armstrong is dead? Oh NO!
I am so grateful to him for several things
and I hoped to say so to his face one day.
Why is it raining on my glasses?

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For those who don’t know what Joe did, this is one of his papers that I found invaluable.

Use of Prolog for developing a new programming language

Also: A History of the Erlang VM

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