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OTOH every decent erlang book or tutorial I've ready, from Armstrong's book[1] to Learn You Some Erlang[2] to Erlang and OTP in Action[3] and others all start off by introducing primitives like spawn, message sending , and receive.

They then introduce OTP and explain all the cases it handles.

I've never read a book or tutorial on OTP that just starts with OTP. In fact (a bit tangetially) whenever I encounter abstractions where I don't already understand the primitives I have a very difficult time. Maybe that's just the way my brain is wired though. I have a terrible time with OO programming for that reason. I much prefer a separation of functions and data because it's much easier for me to reason about what is happening.

Anyway, I agree that programmers should start with the primitives, but I've never seen anyone really teach OTP any other way.

Edit: also there are tools such as Erlang.mk[4] by Loïc Hoguin[5] that will handle a lot of the boilerplate for OTP projects and building releases, though it's good to do it manually at least once while learning.

[1] https://pragprog.com/titles/jaerlang2/programming-erlang-2nd...

[2] https://learnyousomeerlang.com/

[3] https://www.manning.com/books/erlang-and-otp-in-action

[4] https://erlang.mk/guide/index.html

[5] https://ninenines.eu/



> every decent erlang book or tutorial I've ready, from Armstrong's book[1] to Learn You Some Erlang...

What a coincidence! I just tweeted about how you can get it and 12 other various programming books for just $8 now: https://twitter.com/AlchemistCamp/status/1311796404830892032




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