Getting hang of functional programming takes time. Writing code elixir way requires unlearning what you have learning from imperative languages.
Scala isn't exactly an imperative language. If anything it's the actor model isn't exactly easy to wrap your head around
I was talking more about Java/Python. Also Scala has inheritance and OOP. Which don’t exist in elixir has only map.Map + additional field is struct in elixir.
Function capture, enumerations, pattern matching, implicit return and tuples returning status is what confuses new people.
Most try to implement some kind of inheritance in elixir.
Actor model is in OTP. Process, supervison, actor and messages are concepts of OTP. Elixir does not have actor in in its language constructs.
There is no replacement/alternative for OTP if you want distributed systems.
Many tried to reimplement Erlang in their languages and failed miserably.