Erlang Concurrency

Introduction

Erlang's concurrency model based on lightweight processes and message passing enables building massively scalable systems. Processes are isolated with no shared memory, communicating asynchronously through messages. This model eliminates concurrency bugs common in shared-memory systems.

The BEAM VM efficiently schedules millions of processes, each with its own heap and mailbox. Process creation is fast and cheap, enabling "process per entity" designs. Links and monitors provide failure detection, while selective receive enables flexible message handling patterns.

This skill covers process creation and spawning, message passing patterns, process links and monitors, selective receive, error propagation, concurrent design patterns, and building scalable concurrent systems.

Process Creation and Spawning