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Comment by codetrotter | Hacker News Reader

Does anyone at Ericsson still use Erlang? If so I hope these layoffs do not negatively impact internal use of Erlang at Ericsson. It’s a language built on some pretty nifty ideas.

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Of course old networks are still operated and maintained. 5G is exclusively "cloud-native" (i.e. microservices on Kubernetes) and most common core components are written in Java, Go and Python. So while Erlang is still being used and ran, most new code is not written in Erlang, as far as I know.

Erlang is still in very much in active use for parts of Packet Core 5G. Other parts of Packet Core are C++ and C.

and in RAN too.

Think about network functions that where these languages do not make sense; then you will find they are not used. You wouldn't write a packet processing router in any of those languages (aka UPF). High availability, fault tolerant applications for NAS and non-NAS signalling speaking to the gNodeB/UEs - same deal.

On a parallel note, when I was at Nokia Networks, the long-term plan was to replace everything that was using a mix of C++ and Perl for distributed computing in HP-UX with Java, leaving C++ only for the low level hardware stuff.

Not sure how much of it ended up happening, after all the layoffs in Germany a couple of years ago.

This HN comment says the same, it's not used anymore:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18142526

That thread says the opposite at the end. The ban they were referring to was over a decade prior.

Ericsson has a dedicated team that maintains and actively improves Erlang with new features and capabilities.

This is very interesting thank you. I always said to myself if I was writing anything telecom-y I would use Erlang but seems its days are behind us. I wonder if it's just too expensive to hire and train people in it when everyone knows Go/Java/Python already, or if it's more the idea that other ecosystems have sprung up to replace it e.g. K8s.

Ericsson literally hires people full time to work on Erlang.

I've heard that they don't use Erlang at all except for test suites, and I've read rumors that it was mostly politics from C++ people who succeeded in making it so.

Erlang is used for implementing the AMF functionality in the 5G Core.

What you heard is completely and utterly incorrect information. It's used extensively across multiple products and business areas.

I'm glad to hear that. This was from an Ericsson employee for the record.

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