Some examples of companies using Elixir / Erlang in production: Discord, WhatsApp, WeChat, Bet365, Pinterest (notification system).
This is hardly "obscure" - these are applications used by billions of users all over the world.
Potential developer market for your business or OS project is a factor in engineering, sure. But it's certainly not the only one, and there's a utility threshold for how useful a large developer base can be - maybe I don't care that there are only 10,000 good Elixir in my region if I only need 3 or 4, and I can entice them with good conditions (salary, or a prestigious OS project)
World-class CTOs and engineers choose Erlang and Elixir for their working characteristics as programming languages, a point which you've chosen to completely ignore.
> Even worse, it's functional
I wouldn't consider myself a functional programmer (although if a language offers FP facilities I often use the hell out of them over imperative and OO constructs) but if I built something in FP because I thought it was be the best-suited paradigm for the task at hand, I'd happily weed out people who can't be arsed to learn the rudiments.
We'll have to agree to disagree. I think the numbers clearly show Elixir is obscure and declining fast and that in general that can't be good for OSS projects, you seem to think otherwise and that's OK.
This is hardly "obscure" - these are applications used by billions of users all over the world.
Potential developer market for your business or OS project is a factor in engineering, sure. But it's certainly not the only one, and there's a utility threshold for how useful a large developer base can be - maybe I don't care that there are only 10,000 good Elixir in my region if I only need 3 or 4, and I can entice them with good conditions (salary, or a prestigious OS project)
World-class CTOs and engineers choose Erlang and Elixir for their working characteristics as programming languages, a point which you've chosen to completely ignore.
> Even worse, it's functional
I wouldn't consider myself a functional programmer (although if a language offers FP facilities I often use the hell out of them over imperative and OO constructs) but if I built something in FP because I thought it was be the best-suited paradigm for the task at hand, I'd happily weed out people who can't be arsed to learn the rudiments.