# Redistributing Our Systems. Erlang's Enduring Lessons for Local-First

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/beam-there-done-that-7725251/redistributing-our-systems-erlang-s-enduring-lessons-for-local-first
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/beam-there-done-that-7725251/redistributing-our-systems-erlang-s-enduring-lessons-for-local-first.md
Podcast: [BEAM There, Done That](https://stenobird.com/podcast/beam-there-done-that-7725251)
Published: 2026-04-10T09:00:00+00:00
Episode link: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/beamtheredonethat/episodes/Redistributing-Our-Systems--Erlangs-Enduring-Lessons-for-Local-First-e3hc7r0
Audio file: https://anchor.fm/s/10f787368/podcast/play/117890336/https%3A%2F%2Fd3ctxlq1ktw2nl.cloudfront.net%2Fstaging%2F2026-3-3%2F421322806-44100-2-e4581e9d23e19.mp3
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JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/beam-there-done-that-7725251/episodes/redistributing-our-systems-erlang-s-enduring-lessons-for-local-first
Duration seconds: 3128

## Resource

Erlang was designed for reliability in telephone switches, but its core principles — isolated processes, message passing, “let it crash supervision — anticipated problems we’re only now grappling with at scale. Four decades later, these ideas are finding new expression in local-first software: apps that work offline, sync peer-to-peer, and put users back in control of their data.In this podcast, Robert Virding (Erlang co-creator) and Brooke Zelenka trace the intellectual lineage from telecom switches to CRDTs and capabilities. They’ll explore how Erlang’s fault-tolerance model maps onto modern challenges, distributed security, and systems that continue to work offline. The cloud promised to simplify distributed systems; instead concentrated in a handful of companies; perhaps the answers we need were hiding in a language designed for phone switches all along.

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