There are TONS of JVM languages and nobody is complaining about that. BEAM is much smaller and a very nice target IMO. I learned Erlang but found it too weird for my tastes. Elixir lacked a type system when I evaluated it, and that steered me away from it. Gleam feels kind of like Elm felt. Small, simple, and safe. It feels very intentional and designed for a particular purpose and audience. I did their online tutorial and felt comfortable with the language in one sitting. Can’t say that for many other languages.