Erlang Interview Questions for Developers

A solid language that features hot code swapping, fault tolerance, and functional programming, Erlang is a popular choice in the telecommunications and IoT industries.

Erlang was developed in the late 1980s by Ericsson, a Swedish telecommunications company, to address the need for a programming language that could handle massive concurrency, distributed systems, and fault tolerance. Joe Armstrong, Robert Virding, and Mike Williams were the key developers behind the language.

http://www.erlang.org/

To assess the proficiency of Erlang developers during coding interviews, we offer an assortment of practical coding tasks and interview queries listed below. Furthermore, we have devised a variety of recommended techniques to guarantee that your interview questions effectively gauge the candidates’ Erlang competencies.

Erlang example question

Help us design a parking lot app

Hey candidate! Welcome to your interview. Boilerplate is provided. Feel free to change the code as you see fit. To run the code at any time, please hit the run button located in the top left corner.

Goals: Design a parking lot using object-oriented principles

Here are a few methods that you should be able to run:

• Tell us how many spots are remaining
• Tell us how many total spots are in the parking lot
• Tell us when the parking lot is full
• Tell us when the parking lot is empty
• Tell us when certain spots are full e.g. when all motorcycle spots are taken
• Tell us how many spots vans are taking up

Assumptions:

• The parking lot can hold motorcycles, cars and vans
• The parking lot has motorcycle spots, car spots and large spots
• A motorcycle can park in any spot
• A car can park in a single compact spot, or a regular spot
• A van can park, but it will take up 3 regular spots
• These are just a few assumptions. Feel free to ask your interviewer about more assumptions as needed

Interview best practices for Erlang roles

When conducting efficient Erlang interviews, it’s essential to take into account various aspects, such as the candidates’ experience levels and the specific engineering role they are pursuing. To make certain your Erlang interview questions generate optimal outcomes, we suggest adhering to these best practices during interactions with candidates:

• Formulate technical questions that reflect real-world situations within your organization. This method not only engages the candidate but also allows you to more accurately assess their suitability for your team.
• Foster a collaborative environment by permitting candidates to ask questions throughout the interview.
• Candidates should also have knowledge of designing and implementing distributed systems via nodes and global process registries.

Furthermore, it’s crucial to observe standard interview practices when conducting Erlang interviews. This involves tailoring question difficulty according to the candidate’s expertise, offering prompt feedback on their application status, and allowing candidates to inquire about the evaluation or collaborate with you and your team.