First : functional programming — and strangely enough the data structure used for it (Clojure has collection, Lisp has, well, list, and Elixir is a mix a both for that) Second : actors and the various paradigm around it. Third : real (working) macro Fourth : Erlang/BEAM. Fifth : no parentheses discomfort, which could be a thing for you. No excuse to have fun. Sixth : the Erlang/Elixir tooling (dializer for static check, mix, exrm, distillery, edeliver... and you even have a type system with typespec)

This is not a hard language to get. That's not it's purpose. It's practical if you want to adhere to the actor system, functional everywhere and so on.