While the Erlang syntax is certainly a bit unusual I suspect that the greater adoption of Erlang is hampered more by other things.
For instance, there is tool support. As with any language that isn't very widely used there aren't that many tools for the language. It makes it more difficult to get up and going in a short manner. This is especially true if you're on Windows since many Erlang projects don't work on Windows (even though the VM itself has Windows support).
Beyond that, Erlang uses a model of programming and concurrency that isn't commonly used elsewhere. While you can get many of the features of Erlang in other systems, you are generally making an intentional effort to do so. Things like messaging passing, processes and hot code swapping are at the core of the language and getting used to things like this can be a bit overwhelming.
On top of that many of the Erlang projects I've worked with have extremely sparse documentation. There are many cool projects out there like Mochiweb, Nitrogen, etc. but getting up and going with them can at times be an exercise in frustration.
I think these things combine to make a barrier to entry that is much larger than people's syntax preferences.
For instance, there is tool support. As with any language that isn't very widely used there aren't that many tools for the language. It makes it more difficult to get up and going in a short manner. This is especially true if you're on Windows since many Erlang projects don't work on Windows (even though the VM itself has Windows support).
Beyond that, Erlang uses a model of programming and concurrency that isn't commonly used elsewhere. While you can get many of the features of Erlang in other systems, you are generally making an intentional effort to do so. Things like messaging passing, processes and hot code swapping are at the core of the language and getting used to things like this can be a bit overwhelming.
On top of that many of the Erlang projects I've worked with have extremely sparse documentation. There are many cool projects out there like Mochiweb, Nitrogen, etc. but getting up and going with them can at times be an exercise in frustration.
I think these things combine to make a barrier to entry that is much larger than people's syntax preferences.