Disclaimer: I've been doing Erlang now for a handful of projects for a year and a half, and I love it. The syntax is a little jarring at first, more-so than mo

Disclaimer: I've been doing Erlang now for a handful of projects for a year and a half, and I love it. The syntax is a little jarring at first, more-so than most languages, but it's really not that bad. And as long as you stick with OTP, generic servers, and the like, you get to avoid some of issues that can make Erlang code harder to follow (naked bang message passing, spawning processes directly, etc). Frankly, I think the syntactical warts (ending line variations, record syntax, if-statement construct, etc) are well worth it for the benefits of message passing, lightweight process spawning, pattern matching, code hot-swap, and particularly locational transparency. At the very least, Erlang is an interestingly different enough language that I recommend it for anyone to spend a few weeks to learn at least the basics.