Yes, but please also not that it is generally faster than perl/python/ruby even for computational tasks. It is slow in comparison to C/Java/Go/Rust type of languages. The “erlang/elixir is slow” quote is thrown around so much that people have started believing it is slow in comparison to any language which is not true.
I don’t believe this is true. If you look at https://benchmarksgame-team.pages.debian.net/benchmarksgame/which-programs-are-fast.html for example erlang comes in somewhere in betweeen and faster than perl and python. And these are tasks which are very unsuitable to do in erlang/elixir.
Can it be slower than perl and python for specific tasks? Of course. The task may be much easier to implement in a mutable language, it may rely on highly optimized underlying code or it is actually done in C.
On the other hand: If you have a problem domain which fits erlang/elixir then it will be fast. That is also the reason go doesn’t have more of an advantage. The computational strength of the language is not as important as its concurrent primitives and handling with IO. And even if go is generally faster when it comes to handling things concurrently the gaps narrows because the “speed” of goroutines vs processes and the underlying scheduling even things out.
