I find this statement, unconvincing. Elixir and the improvements to the VM were the last big leaps. None of these things affected the issues that keep Erlang from being relevant.

Erlang is some inexplicably sacred cow on HN, among the few other forums who still discuss it. Making sweeping changes is going to be required, to get the adoption that some are seeking...specifically the authors of these kinds of posts. Waiting another couple decades for the killer app to catapult it, will never happen.

Nah, this take would be as bad in 2009 as it is today. I mean, it's evidently clear they can't wrap their head around functional programming, which is absolutely fine, until you jump to generalizing conclusions like this.