[rdtsc]

> Sounds to me like languages don't matter for scale.

If by languages you mean syntax, perhaps. If you mean platforms, then it does matter. And it's non obvious things such as fault tolerance for example - ability not just to have lots small concurrent processes but that they have isolated heaps.That's not just gimmick but it allows designing systems and operating them in a different way. For example having whole subsystems crash and restart safely without affecting the rest of the service.

Or even silly things like being able to hot reload code or log into a live node and add a dynamic trace or hotpatch a module to get extra debugging info without stopping.

Now you can sort of do that with other frameworks, it's just it's much nicer in Erlang because it comes built-in and it just feels like using the right tool for the job. As in using a hammer to hammer nails vs say using the pliers to hammer nails.