[jeremyjh]

> Elixir is not built on top of Erlang the language. It compiles to the same BEAM VM bytecode.

Actually it is, at a semantic level. Elixir source is reduced to Erlang's abstract syntax tree format, which is represented in Erlang terms. The same Erlang compiler is used to generate BEAM code for both languages. This isn't just a detail - the ramifications of using Erlang semantics permeates the language. But not to the language's detriment in any way.

[rdtsc]

You're right. I thought it went straight to the core representation like LFE does but I checked and see it translates everything to an Erlang AST. It's just that Erlang AST allows for representation that are not necessarily valid in Erlang (variables don't have to start with camel case, rebinding etc).