Book excerpt: Build It with Nitrogen: the Fast Off the Block Erlang Web Framework guides web developers step-by-step through construction of highly reliable web applications.This easy to-read book assumes minimal Linux or JavaScript skills; guides the reader through 12 hands-on projects. Each project builds on the last toward high-level competency. Readers learn Erlang as they go. Nitrogen simplifies development of web applications, making simple things easy and difficult things manageable. Erlang delivers the high availability, massively scalable, soft real-time performance required by banking, e-commerce, computer telephony, and instant messaging applications.