If you had mentioned Erlang a few years ago people would have scoffed unless you were programming a telco switch. Now you have Ruby developers spending time checking it out, and dealing with some of the ugliness of the methodname/1 language itself.

You could argue that JavaScript is making a comeback with the Ajax universe expanding all over, but it isn’t like JavaScript has ever disappeared.

The Academy of Computing and Machinery also looked at Lisp, but that hasn’t come back yet… although maybe it will be the language for 2009? Or Smalltalk?

Erlang has previously won awards for “Best Movie for a Programming Language”:

What about the other awards?

• Lifetime Achievement
• Community Waiting for an Update
• Biggest Hack for a Language Runtime
• Most Original Name for a New Language
• Most Format Restrictive Language
• Best Comeback for a Programming Language
• Most Overloaded Product Name

Got some ideas for awards you would give?