Quite a few of us are very happy with the Erlang language itself. Many consider your idea something of a pipe dream because the Erlang VM and its process model

Quite a few of us are very happy with the Erlang language itself. Many consider your idea something of a pipe dream because the Erlang VM and its process model relies on referential integrity, something you cannot exactly bolt onto a langauge. What you're going to end up with is a language that is semantically identical to Erlang with small visual differences. That's quite a bit of work for little gain, and you will lose ETS, Mnesia, and the other valuable Erlang APIs. Another commenter mentions Elixir. I don't see how `def NAME do BODY end` is any better than `NAME() -> BODY.` In the end I think that it's better to just learn Erlang.