As somebody who has been diving into Elixir and Phoenix this year I have to say that the Phoenix way into Elixir isn't as exciting as a backend application writ

As somebody who has been diving into Elixir and Phoenix this year I have to say that the Phoenix way into Elixir isn't as exciting as a backend application written in Elixir in regards to the power of the language and the platform. A lot of Phoenix is hidden and is "magic". You don't need to utilize the OTP at all when using Phoenix and you don't interact directly with what makes Elixir (and Erlang) so special. I started using Phoenix and Elixir and while I liked Elixir's syntax better than other languages I just didn't see what was so great about it. Then I started doing non-web things with Elixir and it became clear how awesome Elixir is. I heard the same thing with Ruby back when I looked at Rails 5 or so years ago. Elixir seems like just another language when you aren't really digging into the OTP.