Elixir was just released 5 years ago, and despite some success, has not taken off as much as the absolute top programming languages released around that time. For example, Go, released just 2 years earlier, is by far the most successful of new languages from the last 10 years.
Given my skeptical mindset towards neomania, it might surprise you to hear that I'm a huge proponent of Elixir! Here are my reasons for studying Elixir and using it exclusively for my non-work projects, despite there being countless other recent, appealing languages:
- Although the language is young, it's built on Erlang, which is 30 years old. Even if Elixir fails, there is a lot of knowledge transfer between the two languages (probably 90% of what I learn from using Elixir transfers directly over even if I switch to exclusively Erlang).
- Web applications are a fantastic use case for the Erlang VM (BEAM). Take a look at this article (https://joearms.github.io/2016/03/13/Managing-two-million-we...) by Joe Armstrong, one of the creators of Erlang, written earlier this year.
- Elixir is quite a bit different from other languages I'm familiar with. It's compiled and functional, has powerful pattern matching, uses lightweight processes and the actor model, and comes with OTP, a complete set of tools that I can use for free. This means even if/when the language dies, I've added a lot of new skills to my programming toolbelt.
To anyone that has decided, like I have, that Elixir is worth putting some time into learning, I'd like to recommend the book Elixir in Action (https://www.manning.com/books/elixir-in-action) and the blog of the author of that book, which has infrequent but outstanding posts (http://theerlangelist.com/).