The BEAM Book (2017) | Hacker News Reader

The BEAM Book (2017)

blog.stenmans.org

232 pointshazbo22 comments

If curious see also

2018 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17003897

2017 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14061985

Back in my day, BEAM was also this https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BEAM_robotics

I was going to say the same thing. I read "Junkbots, Bugbots, and Bots on Wheels" years ago when I was getting started in electronics. It's also how Solarbotics got started.

Incredible book. Got me building simple neural nets out of 74AC240s rather than code before it was cool. Plan to build a 5 motor walker yet this year for old times sake.

Interesting, I have seen simple neural circuits using opamps but not octal drivers.

Oh that's neat. But I think the BEAM here was open sourced in about '99 and was developed in the 80s.

BEAM the VM seems like a great platform for BEAM the robot design philosophy. :-)

The combination could be "BEAM US" and the output for the service being up or down could be "BEAM US UP" and "BEAM US DOWN".

I clicked on the article thinking it would be that. I got into electronics making little BEAM robot things from salvaged parts. BEAM robotics seems pretty accessible and has an interesting design ethos.

They where created more or less in the same "old days"

Erlang is from 1986, BEAM from 1991-1992

PDFs of the beam book available here: https://github.com/happi/theBeamBook/releases

Thanks for that. For books, I almost never want html and definitely not multiple pages (this one is ok, works well in Pocket).

A bit off-topic: Is there an overview of OTP's design and usage patterns that assumes the reader has minimal Erlang knowledge? I have no Erlang experience, but I am interested in what makes OTP so revered.

Maybe https://ferd.ca/the-zen-of-erlang.html

Or this kind of fun video https://youtu.be/JvBT4XBdoUE

Thanks for sharing. I found the second video to be very entertaining as someone who hasn't seen a lot of Erlang in action. At 32:38 in the video he mentions some issues that plague BEAM which cause some engineers to eschew its use in production. Do you know what issues he could be referring to?

Actually yes he detailed it a bit here https://www.reddit.com/r/elixir/comments/bronlx/discover_wha...

It doesn't provide much detail but "Erlang: The Movie" is definitely worth a watch. It's only 10 minutes long, made by the creators, and is very 80s.

please put Erlang somewhere in the title, theres so many titles I click because the title isn't descriptive enough and I don't want to miss out in case it happens to be a subject of interest.

I don't have a problem with Erlang, but it feels like unintentional clickbait if the title fails to convey what a reader may expect.

Is there anything like this for python?

Like the book or like BEAM?

Do you mean a reference describing the CPython runtime system, etc?

If you're looking for a book describing the runtime and compiler, etc., maybe "CPython Internals"?

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