My BEAM History - A Personal Journey Through Three Decades of BEAM Evolution

Explore the evolution of the BEAM virtual machine through a personal keynote presentation spanning nearly three decades of development history. Follow the journey from BEAM's origins as a fast but memory-intensive Erlang VM to its transformation into the robust foundation that now powers multiple programming languages including Elixir and Gleam. Gain insights into the key milestones, technical decisions, and pivotal moments that shaped BEAM's development from someone who has been intimately involved in its evolution throughout this period. Discover how architectural choices and optimizations over the years have contributed to BEAM's current status as a reliable platform for concurrent and fault-tolerant systems, and understand the technical and strategic considerations that guided its transformation from a single-language runtime to a multi-language ecosystem foundation.