[lawik]

Good comment covering the languages.

I came from Python. For me Elixir was much more approachable as a first step into a functional language. Syntax, documentation, getting started/onboarding. I believe there are efforts under way to make Erlang docs a bit easier to approach.

And then Phoenix with projects like Presence really built my excitement for the language. Had some colleague that was thrilled by Ecto changesets.

So a combination of ergonomics, easily accessible to new people and strong hype-marketing brought me in I guess. And I enjoyed it and am happy with the results it gives.