It's actually not the strangeness that throws me any more; I've programmed in Erlang enough that I'm not spending much time thinking about it anymore. (I am that rare bird: Someone what has actually programmed Erlang professionally. :) ) But the copying and pasting bothers me.
Also, to put it in a C context, when you do:
if (condition)
thing();
else
other_thing();
you frequently want to put debugging code in the "thing()" clause, and so eventually many people (including me) adopt a style of always using the braces, after getting bitten a few time. Erlang basically mandates the lack of braces, so I'm always getting annoyed by adding a statement here or there, or twiddling a function definition. It's a constant low-level annoyance that never stops me from using it for what it is good for (because it is oh-so-good at it), but it doesn't have to be there.
Also, to put it in a C context, when you do:
you frequently want to put debugging code in the "thing()" clause, and so eventually many people (including me) adopt a style of always using the braces, after getting bitten a few time. Erlang basically mandates the lack of braces, so I'm always getting annoyed by adding a statement here or there, or twiddling a function definition. It's a constant low-level annoyance that never stops me from using it for what it is good for (because it is oh-so-good at it), but it doesn't have to be there.