The Strange Programming Language That Helped Build WhatsApp

The curious story of Erlang, told from inside the head of the man who built it.

A note on form. Joe Armstrong, co-creator of the Erlang programming language, died in April 2019. What follows is a work of narrative nonfiction told in an imagined first-person voice. The events, dates, and figures are drawn from the historical record, from Armstrong's own papers, talks, interviews, and blog posts, and from the accounts of the people who worked beside him. Where he is quoted directly, the words are his. The rest is reconstruction: how it might have felt, from where he stood. He would, I think, have preferred that we say so plainly.

Stockholm, February 2014

The news reached me the way news reaches everyone now, on the small glass rectangle in my pocket. Facebook was buying WhatsApp for $19 billion.

I am not a man who follows acquisitions. I follow bugs. But...

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