> The BEAM isn't good at general purpose computing. It's not particularly efficient at performing calculations or using memory.
BEAM languages are fine, easily faster than Python, Ruby, PHP, and competitive with v8 in many cases. Furthermore anyone doing serious data processing in a web service uses a work queue, which can be serviced (if you so choose) by workers written in any language you like.
Ruby has had a VM competitive with BEAM since Ruby 1.9. BEAM has a slight edge but Ruby also has JRuby with a real JIT and all the GC goodness of the JVM.
Modern Python, Ruby, PHP7 are all much faster than generally expected outside of microbenchmarks.
BEAM languages are fine, easily faster than Python, Ruby, PHP, and competitive with v8 in many cases. Furthermore anyone doing serious data processing in a web service uses a work queue, which can be serviced (if you so choose) by workers written in any language you like.