I think the point is you don't have to switch, even if you're doing some kind of realtime webapp you can still piece it together using php and redis (though I'

I think the point is you don't have to switch, even if you're doing some kind of realtime webapp you can still piece it together using php and redis (though I'm not sure whether there's a good comet/websocket framework for php). But it's sure going to be a hack. Also, using Akka or OTP you get a lot of stuff for free: supervisor hierarchies, lightweight processes (not everyone must be an OS thread), pattern matching. So I would agree that pitching these technologies to garden variety web and mobile apps on the value proposition that it's better at dealing with multi-cores is disingenuous. As you said, it has its benefits there. But maybe some of the proponents are just using multi-cores to illustrate a general trend, and maybe less of a singular value proposition.