Entity: ERLANG
Erlang is a term that refers to a unit of traffic intensity in a telephone system or a functional programming language specialized for concurrent processing.
ERLANG
Etymology
The term 'Erlang' is named after A. K. Erlang (1878–1929), a Danish mathematician.
Definition
Erlang can refer to a unit of traffic intensity in a telephone system, where it equals the intensity for a specific period when the average number of simultaneous calls is unity. It can also denote an open-source functional programming language specialized for concurrent processing on Unix and Windows computers.
Historical Context
Originally developed by Ericsson, Erlang has a small but powerful set of primitives to create processes and communicate among them. It is conceptually similar to the language occam, recasting the ideas of communicating sequential processes (CSP) in a functional framework.
Cultural Significance
Processes are the primary means to structure an Erlang application, making it a key tool for developers working on concurrent systems and telecommunications applications.
Related Concepts
Erlang is conceptually similar to the language occam and uses asynchronous message passing for communication among processes.
See Also
A unit of traffic intensity in a telephone system or an open-source functional programming language specialized for concurrent processing.