You can also have a streamlined procedure to release stuff. Most changes in my erlang based system consist of "push to staging branch, click to deploy and test, pull to master, click deploy button". Can't be simpler than that. Most changes in such systems are also pretty simple. When you need to add something big, typically not many things are dependent on that, so deploy is also pretty simple.
> But most of the time you will do better job with PHP in a stupid restartable box behind seven load balancing proxies.
Yeah, we talk here about more complicated things here. If you have something simple, you don't need to use erlang, `python -m http.server` will be even simpler than your php in stupid restartable box, because you don't need a special box, just one small command.