The simple reason is that Elixir is competing in the backend web-services space, which is a very crowded space with many equally-compelling alternatives.

As someone who likes working with off-meta languages, it's clear that the default state for any new language is to die an early death. The fact that Elixir hasn't died is testament to its strengths.

Got me. Running Akkoma on Elixir is a piece of cake, relatively speaking. Trying to run Mastodon on Ruby by simply using the latest version of the required Ruby components hasn't worked for me, ever.

The idea that we'd need to keep a snapshot of modules from a specific date in order to run certain software is ridiculous, and the idea of running it in a container like Docker is just giving in to bad practices. Too often it means things are too fragile to update when there are security issues.

I haven't seen this happen with Elixir. What do they do better / differently from Ruby that updating doesn't cause the house of cards to come crashing down?

It's a wonderful language. Unfortunately the only places I've been able to use it and get paid were places where I ultimately had the decision making ability of the tech stack.

Why isn't it used? It's niche and betting on such a small community is risky for the majority of companies. Why use Elixir when you could hire 10 engineers to pump out javascript. That's the mentality of most.

Hiring for elixir was great, it self selected people who wrote code as their craft. You kind of have to be curious about code to even be aware of Elixir, know how to write elixir. These types of devs would pick it up really quickly because the language is just so damn ergonomic.

I'm using Elixir now, and I wake up so happy that I get paid to do this. I am really blessed.