What is erlang good for?
http://beebole.com/en/blog/erlang/why-erlang/
http://www.aquabu.com/2008/2/15/erlang-pragmatic-studio-day-3-notes
http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/9q0lr/erlang_and_highfrequency_trading/
(jerf's answer)
It's important to realize that Erlang's 4 parts: the language itself, the VMs(BEAM, hipe) standard libs (plus modules on github, CEAN, etc.) and development environment are being steadily updated / expanded/improved. For example, i remember reading that the floating point performance improved when Wings3d's author realized it needed to improve (I can't find a source for this). And this guy just wrote about it:
http://marian-dan.com/wordpress/?p=324
A couple years ago, Tim Bray's Wide Finder publicity and all the folks starting to do web app frameworks and HTTP servers lead (at least in part) to improved regex and binaries handling. And there's all the work integrating HiPE and SMP, the dialyzer project, multiple unit testing and build libs springing up, ..
So its sweet spot is expanding, The difficult thing is that the official docs can't keep up very well, and the mailing list and erlang blogosphere volume are growing quickly
