[freedomben]

Also second this. It might seem at first like an unnecessary lift, but it will be a great stepping stone. If you haven't used a functional language before, there are some differences you need to grok (such as immutability, looping) before you'll be able to kill it. Elixir's syntax will be a lot more familiar to you, but will get you used to all the data structures/types/patterns you'll need for erlang. At that point it's just learning some syntax differences.