Detecting a bug, crashing, and then restarting, can be much easier to write than code which is bug-free. In fact, some times, you need so much code that it is l

Detecting a bug, crashing, and then restarting, can be much easier to write than code which is bug-free. In fact, some times, you need so much code that it is likely you are introducing more bugs by trying to handle an edge-case. A key point of Erlang systems, however, is that they are really good at reporting the state of the system when it crashes (due to functional programming, you have the state from before the crash happened, and what event lead to the crash). The restart is a stop-gap measure that gives you service for the system as a whole. You can then look at the logged bug report and fix the problem. But you are in control of how quickly you want to fix the problem. There is a cost to fixing a bug as well.