I haven't used or looked at Erlang, but bear with me.

* no package manager

This is _huge_. For example: I currently work very heavily with node.js. I understand all of the many, many problems with javascript. NPM single-handedly makes up for all of them put together, in my eyes.

Which is to say - an amazing package manager can make a poor language. A decent package manager (pip, for example) allows a nice language to shine, but won't make or break it. Lack of a package manager could probably kill just about any new languages these days (and Erlang - correct me if I'm wrong - appears to have the popularity of a pretty early-stage language right now).