Yes. Yes! I'm not the only one thinking it then!
I think the Erlang process model is brilliant but it really took on the ugliness of the Prolog syntax without attaining the full benefits of the Prolog logical semantics.
Unification can be very useful in solving some problems. Backtracking is also useful but sometimes gets in the way. Procedural code can be used to do anything that any language can do and students are more familiar with it. So I think Erlang is an interesting addition to languages. And that's without considering it's more practical aspects, e.g., multiprocessing, failover capability, etc.
Nor is Prolog syntax particularly ugly. A problem is that it is too simple, so simple that novices can become confused. Brna, Boulay and Pain discuss why Prolog is difficult in the book:
"Learning to Build and Comprehend Complex Information Structures: Prolog as a Case Study" http://www.amazon.com/Learning-Comprehend-Complex-Informatio...
See the review there by Randall Heltzerman titled "The Most Unlikely Book Ever to be Published".
That said, a few small changes to the erlang grammar could go a long way towards fixing it (changing separators to terminators, etc). Once you get more familiar with Erlang, you go from writing ugly cascading ifs on multiple conditions to simple clean case statements on tuples. You learn when to use function-clause matching vs. internal matching, etc.
Also, if you prefer to use Lisp syntax in Erlang you can use LFE (http://groups.google.com/group/erlang-questions/browse_threa...).
Without making any sort of general claim, I notice that what I learn in one session of erlang is very easily lost/forgotten. It's like perl in this respect.
And don't tell me the people who object to erlang syntax haven't tried it :) (I say that about people who object to python's indentation) I've tried it. It's extremely hard to keep in one's head, and takes simply too long to become part of 'muscle memory'.
Anyway, pointers to get started would be most appreciated. It's probably counterproductive to my interests to criticize while I ask for help :)
To say that Arc is not concerned with brevity or expressiveness is simply ridiculous.
For the record, I think the way Erlang supports functional programming isn't particularly elegant and I think having Prolog-like syntax without Prolog-like semantics is silly.