Not to be glib, but what you are saying, kind-of, is "the worse a company is at staying up to date with technology, the more meaningful it is if they use a fringe langauge"
Yes? If a company sucks at trying new things, then it's probably noteworthy when they bothered to try a new thing, because it implies that either 1. they're pulling out of their rut, or 2. this thing was so great that even they wanted to use it.
(Note, I'm not convinced that IBM is quite so ... obsolete... as this discussion implies, either.)
Considering they sold most of their hardware department, such as harddrive to Hitachi and thinkpad to Lenovo, and went focusing on patents, this is a change in their image. I had the view they were risk adverse, to be using Elm is interesting.
I don't see that as a criticism. It just means a new technology is noteworthy enough that even those slow to catch up get interested. Like when senior citizens started using iPads.
