Lots of nonsense involved in running and/or deploying an Erlang program, this is a small note on how to run one immediately.

main.erl

% There are two ways to run this file. The first 
% is as follows:
%
%   $ erlc main.erl
%   $ erl -noshell -s main init
%
% Here, `erlc` is compiling the erlang file to beam
% bytecode and writes said bytecode to 'main.beam'.
% Then erl, by default looking in the immediate
% directory, loads any beam files, looks for the
% main module, and invokes it's init process.
%
% The second method uses `escript` and requires that
% there be a 'main' function. Given that an erlang
% file can be executed as shown:
%
%   $ escript main.erl

-module(main).
-export([init/0]).

init() ->
  ok = io:format("Success!"),

  % init:stop(), erlang:halt(0), and stop(self()) are
  % all equally valid ways of exiting an erlang program.

  init:stop().