LFE Features

The Erlang Inheritance

Language Properties

• Lightweight concurrency
• Asynchronous communication
• Error handling
• Process isolation
• Continuous evolution of system
• High-level language

Influencing Factors

• No global data
• No mutable data
• Standard Erlang data types
• Pattern matching and guards
• Erlang functions (with name and arity)
• Erlang modules
• Compiler and interpreter

The Lisp Inheritance

• Functions and variables have separate namespaces (LFE is a Lisp-2)
• Macros (unhygenic) with the added benefit of supporting pattern matching
• Homoinconicity
• Easy conceptual mapping between LFE and decades of Lisp software

LFE-Specific Features

• Three-pass compiler (macro expansion, linting, code-generation)
• Generates Core Erlang
• New work on LFE REPL will support function and macro definition in the REPL
• Full interoperability with Erlang/OTP and third-party Erlang libraries
• Java interop via JInterface and Erjang

Hipster Appeal

• A "rare" language, more fringe than Erlang proper
• A younger cousin to Clojure (released in 2008) that far fewer programmers know about
• Actor model
• Lisp!
• Create your own compilers
• DSLs galore
• Metaprogramming
• FP
• Heavily inspired by Common Lisp and Scheme
• Borrows some ideas from Elixir and Clojure
• The Banarama of languages
• Open
• Telecom
• Platform
• It’s a language out of a language out of Sweden that can be used to build web scale, asynchronous, non-blocking, sharded, event driven, message passing, NoSQL, reliable, highly available, high performance, real time, clusterable, bad ass, rock star, get the girls, get the boys, impress your mom, impress your cat applications
• You can blast it in the face with a shotgun and it keeps on coming
• C10k what?
• Utterly terrifying
• 19 billion dollars