As a dev that used Python for the majority of projects I skipped over Elixir when I first saw it based on just a quick scan of the home page. "What? A dynamic, functional, compiled language that looks a little like Ruby? Why would I spend time learning this?". And I'm happy to say that I now love Elixir. Off the top of my head the 5 best features are: pattern matching[1], fault tolerance (a single isolated VM process can crash and then retry quickly), concurrency, Phoenix, and now Nerves[2].
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hDVftaPQwY
https://hexdocs.pm/nerves/getting-started.html