Yeah, why not? My first language was JS but i use Elixir daily and it definitely made me a stronger dev. What hooked me into Elixir was seeing it for the first time and getting really excited by being able to read the code line by line without knowing the syntax and getting a good sense of what was happening.

But three things i think that really matters for someone to pick their first language are: 1. Is syntax and data types easy to grok right off the bat? 2. How fast are they able to make a mental map of the flow and transformations of data only by reading the code? 3. Are the docs easy to read and navigate, and do they instill understanding?

Elixir definitely is for someone that wants to learn it, and are okay with the fact there might not be many resources to learn from. But what i gathered so far is most of the resources and the community really seek to help someone get a deeper understanding of the language and think about the things that go beyond languages like system design and code quality. Yeah there isn't many packages and libraries out there like the more popular languages to put stuff together, but that's where the fun begins. It's like being in uncharted territory where one is forced to engage with what they're doing and learn how to really build stuff from scratch.

For someone thinking about elixir as a first language, hacking around a basic module and testing it out in the repl to building a web app with Phoenix is a great way to learn.