The engineering case studies that prove what the BEAM can actually do
When engineers debate programming languages, the conversation often stays abstract. Performance benchmarks. Theoretical comparisons. "In principle, the actor model should scale better than..."
Let's stop being abstract. There are companies running the BEAM at a scale most engineers will never encounter, with documented results. The numbers are not theoretical. The engineers who built these systems have written about them. Let's look at the evidence.
WhatsApp: 2 Million Connections Per Server, 50 Engineers
In 2014, Facebook acquired WhatsApp for $19 billion. At the time, WhatsApp served 900 million users — with a team of 50 engineers.
