From what I've seen... I think if I were writing business applications, I'd reach for Elixir... if I were writing something lower level like communication software, I'd reach for Erlang.

I have written a fair amount of Elixir (and targeting business applications) and I think Elixir's expressiveness lends itself well to making more abstract models of the business processes and data seen in solving business problems. However, writing Elixir I find you end up reading a lot of Erlang and in certain problem spaces I could imagine the appeal over Elixir. I could absolutely see where if I were writing more technically oriented programs.... programs closer to the hardware in some ways or programs designed to communicate with other programs (protocols, etc.) I could see Erlang as being a more clear and direct language in these circumstances.

All of this is very hand-wavy, but it's my impression.

While I appreciate guest languages for bringing new ideas to specific language platforms, at the end of the day I rather use those that are developed alonside the platform, hence Erlang instead of Elixir, at least if I would be ever doing something with it again.

Last time I touched Erlang, "Learn you some Erlang for great good!" was fresh out of the printers.

Elixir brings mostly a new syntax, and little more. I rather use Gleam IF i really need to use the BEAM.

Other than that, vanilla Erlang is THE way to go.

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For me, Elixir misses the mark. If you're an unc with a background in Ruby or that era of webdev, I can see the appeal. It's a familiar set dressing. I don't have that background, I much prefer the syntactic structure of Erlang's psuedo-horn clauses. Both for similar familiarity reasons (I knew Prolog before I touched Erlang), as well as a general preference for the simplicity.