Erlang in 5 seconds.

There was recently a thread on erlang-questions that discussed how you would present Erlang in 5 seconds. In an unrelated thread it is possible Richard Carlsson managed to nail it:

In most respects, Erlang _is_ a concurrent, nondestructive Lisp with a Prolog-inspired syntax that focuses on pattern matching and rules.

For my own reference he original email:

Nick Linker wrote:
I wonder why Erlang is not Lisp? I mean why inventors of Erlang chose
to create its own language instead of creating just ERTS-specific
library for LISP (or at least Scheme)?

Here are some reasons why Lisp might not be a perfect match to
the problem they wanted to solve:
 - no built-in concurrency
 - destructive updates abound (in Scheme, too)
 - no pattern matching

And if you're going to fix those things, you might as well use a syntax
that feels more comfortable to you. In particular, pattern matching
makes function definitions and selective receives much more readable,
which I assume was an important goal for the kind of industrial
applications that Erlang was created for.

In most respects, Erlang _is_ a concurrent, nondestructive Lisp with
a Prolog-inspired syntax that focuses on pattern matching and rules.

 /Richard