Looks like a nice set of improvements. Disabling the SSH daemon [0] by default is a good security change, same with disabling the SFTP by default.
I think the io_ansi [1] module sounds pretty cool, imo erlang doesn't have a great story for building complicated CLI applications right now, but I haven't tried much. I imagine having this in the stdlib will be a nice leg up in the future. The way fwrite works seamlessly across nodes is very nice, and exactly what I love to see from erlang.
The addition of Native Records [2] is really cool. I'm curious how this will be leveraged in Elixir in the future, since right now I think there is a mix of records, tuples, and maps depending on exactly what is being done. Like the EEP says, I doubt we'll ever see the old records deprecated entirely but this looks like a substantial improvement.
I don't think the ssh daemon was ever automatically enabled or started. The two bullet points are phrased differently, but I think they mean the same thing, when starting the ssh daemon, the listed parts won't be started by default.
> The SSH daemon now defaults to disabled for shell and exec services, implementing the “secure by default” principle. This prevents authenticated users from executing arbitrary Erlang code unless explicitly configured.
> The SFTP subsystem is no longer enabled by default when starting an SSH daemon.
You might want to update prod apps ASAP to this or the latest point version if below 29. Just deployed an app to production, automated security scans found 2 CRITICAL CVEs and half a dozen of HIGH risk ones dated Feb-May 2026.
For anyone wondering what the "OTP" part is in Erlang/OTP, it is a set of libraries and associated principles that, in effect, standardize the creation of highly reliable, fault-tolerant applications, originally for the telecom domain. It's worth checking out the brief introduction to the fundamental ideas in the introduction to "OTP Design Principles":
I don't have first hand knowledge (I left in 2019), but WhatsApp's public Erlang related repos are still active, and afaik, Erlang didn't escape into Meta at large, so if WA had moved off, there's no sense working on Erlang after that.
Who even uses Erlang? I used Rails and then i tried Phoenix and it was lot more difficult to get things done.
I don't understand Phoenix hype
For solo devs, Rails is arguably most productive webapp system. LLM is very good at writing ruby rails code. Much better than writing django in my experience even though python training corpus is huge.
I write my experimental apps in Rail when it stabilizes, i do a Go rewrite.
I don't write directly in Go because, it consumes lot more token when the app scope is unknown but it's very efficient for rails.
These day i don't need react or angular anymore, i use Hotwire in Rails and HTMX in Go.
Erlang forum itself uses Discourse (written in Rails)
I’ve been writing Elixir apps full time since 2016. Clients are very, very happy never to see a crash. In fact, all the applications I have deployed in production in the past 10 years have 100% uptime. (Apart from hardware, OS and network faults outside my control)
Looks like a nice set of improvements. Disabling the SSH daemon [0] by default is a good security change, same with disabling the SFTP by default.
I think the io_ansi [1] module sounds pretty cool, imo erlang doesn't have a great story for building complicated CLI applications right now, but I haven't tried much. I imagine having this in the stdlib will be a nice leg up in the future. The way fwrite works seamlessly across nodes is very nice, and exactly what I love to see from erlang.
The addition of Native Records [2] is really cool. I'm curious how this will be leveraged in Elixir in the future, since right now I think there is a mix of records, tuples, and maps depending on exactly what is being done. Like the EEP says, I doubt we'll ever see the old records deprecated entirely but this looks like a substantial improvement.
[0] https://www.erlang.org/doc/apps/ssh/ssh.html
[1] https://www.erlang.org/docs/29/apps/stdlib/io_ansi.html
[2] https://github.com/erlang/eep/pull/81
I don't think the ssh daemon was ever automatically enabled or started. The two bullet points are phrased differently, but I think they mean the same thing, when starting the ssh daemon, the listed parts won't be started by default.
> The SSH daemon now defaults to disabled for shell and exec services, implementing the “secure by default” principle. This prevents authenticated users from executing arbitrary Erlang code unless explicitly configured.
> The SFTP subsystem is no longer enabled by default when starting an SSH daemon.
You might want to update prod apps ASAP to this or the latest point version if below 29. Just deployed an app to production, automated security scans found 2 CRITICAL CVEs and half a dozen of HIGH risk ones dated Feb-May 2026.
For anyone wondering what the "OTP" part is in Erlang/OTP, it is a set of libraries and associated principles that, in effect, standardize the creation of highly reliable, fault-tolerant applications, originally for the telecom domain. It's worth checking out the brief introduction to the fundamental ideas in the introduction to "OTP Design Principles":
https://www.erlang.org/doc/system/design_principles.html
OTP = Open Telecom Platform
no longer. That is legacy. OTP now just stands for "OTP"
It's still referred as such through the official documentation: https://www.erlang.org/faq/introduction.html#idm24
You may be thinking of comments like: https://erlangforums.com/t/should-otp-be-the-standard-librar...
"Outlaw Techno Psychobitch"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRbY3TMUcgQ
Does anyone knows if WhatsApp is still based on Erlang?
It is (source, old employee of me now works for them)
I don't have first hand knowledge (I left in 2019), but WhatsApp's public Erlang related repos are still active, and afaik, Erlang didn't escape into Meta at large, so if WA had moved off, there's no sense working on Erlang after that.
I'm interested to see how records play out in the ecosystem.
I was about to say "what, we've had records for decades" but then I read the changelog.
Interesting. I wonder if there a world where Elixir starts compiling maps to "native records"?
probably not maps, but structs yes.
Can someone please explain the innards?
Innards of which part? The BEAM Book may be of interest to you:
https://blog.stenmans.org/theBeamBook/
Right in time for the Rust rewrite! /s
Who even uses Erlang? I used Rails and then i tried Phoenix and it was lot more difficult to get things done.
I don't understand Phoenix hype
For solo devs, Rails is arguably most productive webapp system. LLM is very good at writing ruby rails code. Much better than writing django in my experience even though python training corpus is huge.
I write my experimental apps in Rail when it stabilizes, i do a Go rewrite.
I don't write directly in Go because, it consumes lot more token when the app scope is unknown but it's very efficient for rails.
These day i don't need react or angular anymore, i use Hotwire in Rails and HTMX in Go.
Erlang forum itself uses Discourse (written in Rails)
Erlang != Elixir - but otherwise a good question. I think WhatsApp uses erlang
I’ve been writing Elixir apps full time since 2016. Clients are very, very happy never to see a crash. In fact, all the applications I have deployed in production in the past 10 years have 100% uptime. (Apart from hardware, OS and network faults outside my control)
You might want to broaden your horizons.