ASDF is easy to use once you've learned a few of the basic commands, and that way you'll have an easy time when new versions come out and want to check out new features. Like the built-in JSON parser, the gradual typing when it drops, things like that.

If you built something useful you might not want to upgrade it just to look at the new stuff, and if you built nothing and just drop into iex a couple of times per year it'll still be easier to pull in the latest BEAM and Elixir versions and play around than figuring out if Homebrew has the new version, and if so, whether it installs nicely over the old or not.

I don't think I've got the LSP running, might check tomorrow. It's OK, the IDE autocompletes some things and for me development basically happens in the REPL and then gets pasted into tests and the project anyway. And iex has good autocomplete and help functions and so on.

Edit: A hurdle might be to install the GUI libraries needed for Observer, but you'll probably be able to search out an incantation for your operating system once you're into doing stuff with process trees.