Programming erlang...

If somebody dies, other people will notice. If I’m in a room and suddenly keel over and die, somebody will probably notice (well, at least I hope so). Erlang processes are just like people—they can on occasions die. Unlike people, when they die, they shout out in their last breath exactly what they have died from. Imagine a room full of people. Suddenly one person keels over and dies. Just as they die, they say “I’m dying of a heart attack” or “I’m dying of an exploded gastric wobbledgog.” That’s what Erlang pro- cesses do. One process might die saying “I’m dying because I was asked to divide by zero.” Another might say, “I’m dying because I was asked what the last element in an empty list was.”