Erlang is functional, but in any case, you're right about its performance - it's more or less that of a fast interpreted language, rather than a compiled language.
I never thought of it as functional - looked more like little islands of imperative programming to me (I guess I will have to check again).
I think fast interpreted is probably even overstating it, it makes all sorts of compromises. Erlang was also designed for very high availability - so that must cost something as well.
I guess we will see what happens, but I am very skeptical about erlang (not sure why, just a gut feel).
