The Elixir programmers that I know describe it as 'biting the bullet', going from their familiar environment into something that is pretty alien to them. Instead of all the luxury you are used to suddenly you have to get into the mindset of programmers that didn't have access to all of these fancy tools (and sometimes very useful tools). For example, debuggers are to me a luxury, I am used to reason about what my code does before writing it. If your first reflex upon reaching an issue with your code is to reach for a debugger to see what it does instead of what you meant then you will probably never really train that reasoning ability. This also tends to be a dividing line between 'gluing APIs together to get something that works' versus building something from the foundational pieces offered by the language and then integrating that into a larger whole.
OTP is a fantastic example of this sort of thing: it is arcane, fairly complex but surprisingly well built and the quality of the architecture is something most modern frameworks can only dream of. The only reason it is still around is for the same reason that crocodiles are still around: it is extremely well adapted to the niches where it is present, all the other stuff has died out. You can re-invent all (or usually part) of OTP in any language and there have been many attempts at doing just that. But why would you? It already exists and it is far more battle hardened and time tested than anything new likely will ever be. Ok, you'll have to bite that bullet...
I think many web developers do just fine without ever having to touch Erlang, which is one of the nice things I like about Elixir: it's making a platform that is almost tailor made to web development really accessible to web developers. There is an idea outside the ecosystem that Elixir is "overkill" for simple apps but that's just not true!
For those that find themselves needing to dive into Erlang, I too have seen several people describe it as "Biting the bullet," and I'm a bit in that camp myself. For me it's not Erlang the language that's a problem, it's the documentation. This speaks to what you said about being from another era. I just do not find it enjoyable to read.
You otherwise seem to be saying that modern tooling is bad because it doesn't force you to be as diligent a programmer. I neither agree nor disagree with this but it's a whole other convo.
OTP is a fantastic example of this sort of thing: it is arcane, fairly complex but surprisingly well built and the quality of the architecture is something most modern frameworks can only dream of. The only reason it is still around is for the same reason that crocodiles are still around: it is extremely well adapted to the niches where it is present, all the other stuff has died out. You can re-invent all (or usually part) of OTP in any language and there have been many attempts at doing just that. But why would you? It already exists and it is far more battle hardened and time tested than anything new likely will ever be. Ok, you'll have to bite that bullet...