Agree, and Claude Code does very well with Elixir despite TS/Python getting all the hype:
https://youtu.be/iV1EcfZSdCM?si=KAJW26GVaBqZjR3M
This helps with keeping it on track writing idiomatic elixir and using good patterns: https://skills.sh/agoodway/.claude/elixir-genius
I think most of this trial and error "You are an experienced engineer" stuff probably hurts model performance. No one ever does comprehensive testing so eh, yolo.
https://github.com/agoodway/.claude/blob/main/skills/elixir-...
There are papers showing that models follow instructions less the more instructions they have. Now you think about how many instructions are embedded in that MD + the system prompt + likely a local AGENTS.md and at the end there is probably very little here that matters.
Yeah, I honestly lean on the elixir agent one more over the full skill:
https://github.com/agoodway/.claude/blob/main/agents/elixir-...
> # WRONG: Elixir has no elsif
How much context is eaten up by skills that rehash what a SOTA model should already know?
Maybe token-wise, it's a wash: Elixir/OTP does a lot without third-party libs, which would require massive npm dependencies to achieve the same thing.