I'm not trolling; of course whether Erlang is OOP depends on a definition of OOP you consider "real". If you think of OOP as Java-style programming, then of cou

I'm not trolling; of course whether Erlang is OOP depends on a definition of OOP you consider "real". If you think of OOP as Java-style programming, then of course, Erlang has very little in common with it. On the other hand, if you go back to what Alan Kay had in mind when he invented OO, namely objects as "black boxes, similar to computers in miniature" and "message passing as the only way of doing something" then Erlang is very, very much OO. Its processes are objects, and sending (asynchronous!) messages is built into the language. Then you get encapsulation, data hiding and interfaces with module exports and behaviours. That doesn't stop Erlang from being FP, too. Really, there are many different paradigms and many implementations of each one, it benefits no one to only consider one particular implementation as representative for a whole paradigm. Footnote: Alan Kay post on a similar topic: http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/1998-October/017019.html http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/1998-...