Notes on 'style' currently used
When I got started with Erlang, I was transpiling game-DSL macros written in Common Lisp (and previously expanded to CL code) to Erlang. OTP just made the impedence mismatch worse, so I ignored it until I decided to start writing new things (and rewriting difficult to debug things) in Erlang. At that point, I wrote some things "the OTP way," but I found it more awkward than straight-Erlang.
So, while if I were to implement something serious (read: work), I would take the time to honor the OTP wisdom, for my own experimental hacking, I prefer the way this code is written, including the process dictionary abuse. Which is not to say that it couldn't be refactored and polished, made more robust, and given test coverage.