The Joy of Erlang; Or, How To Ride A Toruk by Evan Miller.
From the post:
In the movie Avatar, there’s this big badass bird-brained pterodactyl thing called a Toruk that the main character must learn to ride in order to regain the trust of the blue people. As a general rule, Toruks do not like to be ridden, but if you fight one, subdue it, and then link your Blue Man ponytail to the Toruk’s ptero-tail, you get to own the thing for life. Owning a Toruk is awesome; it’s like owning a flying car you can control with your mind, which comes in handy when battling large chemical companies, impressing future colleagues, or delivering a pizza. But learning to ride a Toruk is dangerous, and very few people succeed.
I like to think of the Erlang programming language as a Toruk. Most people are frightened of Erlang. Legends of its abilities abound. In order to master it, you have to fight it, subdue it, and (finally) link your mind to it. But assuming you survive, you then get to control the world’s most advanced server platform, usually without even having to think. And let me tell you: riding a Toruk is great fun.
This guide is designed to teach you the Erlang state of mind, so that you are not afraid to go off and commandeer a Toruk of your own. I am going to introduce only a handful of Erlang language features, but we’re going to use them to solve a host of practical problems. The purpose is to give you the desire and confidence to go out and master the rest of the language yourself.
You are welcome to type the examples into your own Erlang shell and play around with them, but examples are foremost designed to be read. I recommend printing this document out and perusing it in a comfortable chair, away from email, compilers, 3-D movies, and other distractions.
Do you think people view topic maps as a Toruk?
How would you train them to ride rather than be eaten?