I think the problem is that Erlang does some things extremely well, which leads to people getting a bit smug about it, in a way that sometimes reminds me of "photography purists" sniffing at digital photography as being so very clearly sub-par, a few years ago.

My reality is that for a lot of the web stuff I do, the faster development time that Rails gives me is worth way more than a bit of speed / better use of resources. I don't need a redundant site with 0 downtime, I need to figure out if there's a market for what I'm working on, and/or pivot and add features as I begin to understand things better.

+1 for Chicago Boss, though, it's a solid effort that tries to push Erlang in some interesting directions. I do think I'll be using it for a project soonish, as the specs involve a lot of piping data around, and websockets, stuff that Rails is not as good at.