How many Erlang programs distributed via Homebrew ?

What is Erlang ? 🔗

Erlang is a general-purpose, functional programming language designed specifically for building scalable, fault-tolerant systems that require high availability. It is renowned for its ability to handle massive numbers of concurrent activities simultaneously, making it a standard choice for telecommunications and instant messaging platforms.

Core Design and Features 🔗

Erlang differentiates itself from other languages through its unique approach to reliability and system uptime.

• Concurrency: The language uses lightweight processes that run in parallel. A single system can easily handle hundreds of thousands of these processes, which communicate via message passing rather than shared memory, preventing data corruption issues common in other multi-threaded languages.
• Fault Tolerance: Erlang operates on a “let it crash” philosophy. Instead of trying to prevent every possible error, it isolates processes so that if one crashes, it does not bring down the entire system. Supervisor processes can detect these crashes and automatically restart the failed components.
• Hot Code Swapping: It allows developers to update or fix code in a running system without shutting it down. This feature is critical for systems that require “nine nines” (99.9999999%) of reliability, such as telephone exchanges.

Origins and History 🔗

The language was originally developed in 1986 by Joe Armstrong, Robert Virding, and Mike Williams at the Ericsson Computer Science Laboratory. Its primary purpose was to solve complex problems in the telecommunications sector, specifically for telephone switches that needed to operate continuously without downtime. Although it began as proprietary software within Ericsson, it was released as open-source software in 1998.

The OTP Ecosystem 🔗

Erlang is rarely used in isolation; it is almost always paired with the Open Telecom Platform (OTP). OTP is a comprehensive set of libraries, design principles, and middleware that provides the building blocks for constructing robust systems. Because of this tight integration, the technology stack is frequently referred to as “Erlang/OTP”.

Real-World Applications 🔗

Due to its reliability and low-latency capabilities, Erlang is used in industries where downtime is unacceptable.

• Telecommunications: It remains a backbone for major mobile networks and switching systems.
• Messaging Apps: High-traffic applications like WhatsApp and Facebook Chat rely on Erlang (or languages running on its virtual machine) to manage billions of simultaneous messages.
• Database Systems: It powers distributed databases like CouchDB and Riak, which require high availability and data consistency.

Statistics of erlang programming language 🔗

On December 16th 2025, The number of CLI apps written in erlang and distributed via Homebrew Core Formulae is 19 apps.

You might want to compare its count with what of R ’s, Go ’s, Rust ’s, or Zig ’s.

Apps written in erlang and distributed via Homebrew Core Formulae 🔗

• erlfmt : Automated code formatter for Erlang
• gleam : Statically typed language for the Erlang VM
• teslamate : Self-hosted data logger for your Tesla
• yaws : Webserver for dynamic content (written in Erlang)
• elixir : Functional metaprogramming aware language built on Erlang VM
• erlang_ls : Erlang Language Server
• lfe : Concurrent Lisp for the Erlang VM
• rebar3 : Erlang build tool
• tsung : Load testing for HTTP, PostgreSQL, Jabber, and others
• proper : QuickCheck-inspired property-based testing tool for Erlang
• rabbitmq : Messaging and streaming broker
• wrangler : Refactoring tool for Erlang with emacs and Eclipse integration
• electric : Real-time sync for Postgres
• emqx : MQTT broker for IoT
• syntaxerl : Syntax checker for Erlang code and config files
• couchdb : Apache CouchDB database server
• ejabberd : XMPP application server
• elvis : Erlang Style Reviewer
• erlang-language-platform : LSP server and CLI for the Erlang programming language

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