The bit of code that finally made Erlang supervisors click for me. From "Learn You Some Erlang for Great Good"

superv.erl

critic() ->
    receive
        {From, {"Rage Against the Turing Machine", "Unit Testify"}} ->
            From ! {self(), "They are great!"};
        {From, {"System of a Downtime", "Memoize"}} ->
            From ! {self(), "They're not Johnny Crash but they're good."};
        {From, {"Johnny Crash", "The Token Ring of Fire"}} ->
            From ! {self(), "Simply incredible."};
        {From, {_Band, _Album}} ->
            From ! {self(), "They are terrible!"}
    end,
    critic().

start_critic2() ->
    spawn(?MODULE, restarter, []).

restarter() ->
    process_flag(trap_exit, true),
    Pid= spawn_link(?MODULE, critic, []),
    receive
        {'EXIT', Pid, normal} -> % not a crash
            ok;
        {'EXIT', Pid, shutdown} -> % manual termination, not a crash
            ok;
        {'EXIT', Pid, _} ->
            restarter()
    end.