I don't think he's dropping Erlang, just deciding that allowing small amounts of imperative / impure code to appear when it greatly simplifies things is a worth

I don't think he's dropping Erlang, just deciding that allowing small amounts of imperative / impure code to appear when it greatly simplifies things is a worthwhile trade-off. (His last post, about using the Erlang process dictionary, is along the same lines.) Also, his archives are worth a read, particularly the Purely Functional Retrogames series. Excellent stuff.