i've always wondered why the Whatsapp acquisition didn't spawn a bunch of startups using Elixir, since a lot of noise was made about how Elixir helped Whatsapp scale with so few people. isnt that how tech cargo culting starts?
WhatsApp used Erlang, not Elixir. There was an uptick in popularity (at least here on HN) after the acquisition. Elixir wasn't as popular in 2014 as it is today, but it was starting to grow.
