As an anecdote: Someone described elixir to be a "high learning curve" language if I wasn't exposed to Functional Programming. When I inquired how long they mean by that, the answer was 2-4 months. Which really says something about our attention spans.
Re: Elixir, not surprising. Makes for more opportunities for some though.
Maybe some of you remember Didier Verna's Lisp, Jazz, Aikido: https://www.didierverna.com/blog/index.php?post/2007/04/03/L...
It's not hard to sympathize with Verna's feelings. These are all based on a similar set of philosophical guideposts: maximal output for minimal input, maximal possibilities of self-expression from a minimal set of generative rules, and understanding the deep "essence" of the craft, so that when you add your own contributions, it is by finding the "essence" of the addition and harmonizing it with the essence of existing work. And these are appealing because they give the feeling of tremendous power and the sky being the limit.
But the real world runs on the philosophy of Visual Basic, punk rock, and mixed martial arts, which are all based on a different set of philosophical guideposts: a) focus on practical solutions to real world problems; b) make getting started as easy as possible for everyone; c) it doesn't matter if added components harmonize with the original; what matters is if they contribute significant value on points a) and b), i.e., it's okay to get messy.
Also, Python's async stuff was always terrible until they introduced the new async/await feature, but I suppose that's part of the "many ways to do the same thing" you mention. They should've done it from the beginning IMO, but it was hard to predict maybe.
Package management isn't a solved problem; Python employs standard patterns for it; Significantly better than chained Makefiles from my C-development days.
I always liked python, but I didn't use it at all really for a very long time until recently, and I've just honestly been surprised by the poor state its packaging seems to be in.
TS is just JS but with extra things that can go wrong (Babel etc) and not being able to use simple `require` syntax anymore and some not-very-automatic type checking that you don't need; I don't use it. It's like taking a steak fresh off the grill and smothering it with mayonnaise.