I think it is rather typical pattern. You see something in another language/platform, so you copy it to your current one, then keep doing it. However after a while you just have to ask yourself, why am I not using this other technology instead of spending time re-implementing it.
So after copying, say supervision trees, RPC mechanisms, distributed system management, actor-based approach, one can ask "wait, am I not just using Erlang then".
> why am I not using this other technology instead of spending time re-implementing it
Because this other technology/platform may lack something that the current platform has. Or you have constraints that lead you to usage of the first platform.
Maybe this other platform could take a hint or two about stuff on the "copying" platform too, so that things go full circle and it does not stay up some ivory tower.
Starts an Erlang node and calls erlang:time/0.
[1] http://www.erlang.org/doc/man/erl_call.html