Check this out this guide from the Phoenix docs:
https://hexdocs.pm/phoenix/json_and_apis.html
That's a ton of stuff just to return some JSON from an endpoint. Sure the structure probably helps when you get into big complex projects, but for a beginner not used to this style of framework it looks like a lot.
It also explicitly mentions Flask, which would be inane to directly compare to either Phoenix or Rails. How complex is your Django app, Mr. Python?
Regardless, I believe "something like Phoenix is using the phx.new and the generators which gives you a ton of files and structure that is a bit overwhelming " is true, it can be overwhelming, when the same thing in, say, Go, would be only one file.
The feedback from the Python person was a bit harsh, and evaluating a language based on LLM generated code is of course silly, but I think some of it still holds true. I'd love for Elixir to be a more approachable solution for simple web services.