Well, "Mastery" is a standard that I think, by definition, few achieve.
But competence in erlang is certainly achievable in a couple of months.
In my example, I started having never once written anything in a functional language. I started by reading Armstrongs book with pragmatic programmers. After a couple of months I could write anything I wanted to in erlang, without too much trouble, and much more importantly:
I was in love with erlang
The idea of writing something in erlang was very exciting and pleasurable to do.
I think that's quite an accomplishment for a language with such a different syntax and with me only putting a couple months into it.
Now, obviously, I won't say I'd mastered it. But prior to that I had the fear of the unknown when it came to functional languages, and a distinct repulsion at erlangs syntax. The only reason I learned it was that I believed it to be the only language that had done concurrency right.
And I had a project to write in it that required concurrency. That might be a big help. I imagine it is hard to learn any language if you don't have a goal that it is well positioned to achieve to work towards while learning.
I suspect people who think erlang is hard to learn, haven't spent any time learning erlang. But in truth, no language, except the very first one, was hard for me to learn.
But competence in erlang is certainly achievable in a couple of months.
In my example, I started having never once written anything in a functional language. I started by reading Armstrongs book with pragmatic programmers. After a couple of months I could write anything I wanted to in erlang, without too much trouble, and much more importantly:
I was in love with erlang
The idea of writing something in erlang was very exciting and pleasurable to do.
I think that's quite an accomplishment for a language with such a different syntax and with me only putting a couple months into it.
Now, obviously, I won't say I'd mastered it. But prior to that I had the fear of the unknown when it came to functional languages, and a distinct repulsion at erlangs syntax. The only reason I learned it was that I believed it to be the only language that had done concurrency right.
And I had a project to write in it that required concurrency. That might be a big help. I imagine it is hard to learn any language if you don't have a goal that it is well positioned to achieve to work towards while learning.
I suspect people who think erlang is hard to learn, haven't spent any time learning erlang. But in truth, no language, except the very first one, was hard for me to learn.