I'm more of a Python and C# kind of guy, so Elixir never really hit the itch for me, but Gleam definitely does. One of these days I'll take a crack to see how I can use Gleam with Phoenix.
I’d recommend to first see if you can use a full-Gleam solution (like wisp/lustre) if it’s a greenfield project – interop is of course possible but can sometimes be a bit unpleasant due to the difference in data structures (Elixir structs va Gleam records) and inability to use Elixir macros directly from Gleam, which are heavily used by projects like Phoenix and Ecto.
I’ve been mostly in Python, C# and C++ for the past decade or so but got into Elixir as my first functional language. Never got comfy with the syntax but dig how everything flows. Looking forward to digging into Gleam.
If you liked Elixir but found it too "exotic" you may find F# enjoyable instead - it's a bit like Elixir but with a very powerful, gradually typed and fully inferred type system and has access to the rest of .NET. Excellent for scripting, data analysis and modeling of complex business domains. It's also very easy to integrate a new F# project into existing C# solution, and it ships with the SDK and is likely supported by all the tools you're already using. F# is also 5 to 10 times more CPU and memory-efficient.
(F# is one of the languages Elixir was influenced by and it is where Elixir got the pipe operator from)