fix: phrasing in the opening of betting on beam

content/blog/betting_on_beam.md

@@ -14,7 +14,7 @@ tags = ["beam", "elixir", "erlang"]
 
 ### What Are We Doing?
 
-**Bogdan/Björn's Erlang Abstract Machine** (BEAM) seems to be something of a sleeper hit in the world of information technology. I first came across it through a [Computerphile Video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOqQVoVai6s) at the beginning of my journey into functional programming. Initially, many of its virtues went over my head. But in time (and with a ravenous addiction to watching talks from [Strange Loop Conferences](https://www.youtube.com/@StrangeLoopConf)) I came across a few talks that shifted my entire perspective on programming after spending some time in the real world of software development.
+**Bogdan/Björn's Erlang Abstract Machine** (BEAM) is the virtual machine that powers the Erlang and Elixir programming languages, among others. I first came across it through a [Computerphile Video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOqQVoVai6s) at the beginning of my journey into functional programming. Initially, many of its virtues went over my head. But in time (and with a ravenous addiction to watching talks from [Strange Loop Conferences](https://www.youtube.com/@StrangeLoopConf)) I came across a few talks that shifted my entire perspective on programming after spending some time in the real world of software development.
 
 Eventually, I stumbled onto [Joe Armstrong](<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Armstrong_(programmer)>)'s talk called [The Mess We're In](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKXe3HUG2l4). Joe was one of the co-creators of Erlang, and this talk, I feel, illustrates the relevance of its concerns around the dire state of modern computer programs to modern computer programmers very effectively. He uses his background in physics and his depth of experience in programming to discuss mainstay computing concerns such as performance, complexity, documentation, and so on, while consistently injecting both humorous and enlightening insights at every turn. I was so taken by this talk that I felt I had to see more from him, and this is when things really changed for me.
 
@@ -58,7 +58,7 @@ Although this is all terribly relevant to anyone working with distributed system
 
 ## Finding Footholds
 
-So if this is such incredible technology, why is nobody using it? I had thought this initially, before I came to find that, really, **everybody** is using it. It arrived, solved a very important problem, and then kept on solving that problem for the last 40 years. The growing interest in it presently is likely best explained by the increasing need for robust systems at scale and the frequent problems posed by concurrency in other languages, as well as the decline of [Koomey's Law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koomey%27s_law) pushing us to reach for parallelisation in search of greater performance gains.
+So if this is such incredible technology, why is nobody using it? I had thought this initially, before I came to find that, really, **everybody** is using it. It arrived, solved a very important problem, and then kept on quietly solving that problem for the last 40 years. The growing vocal interest in it presently is likely best explained by the increasing need for robust systems at scale and the frequent problems posed by concurrency in other languages, as well as the decline of [Koomey's Law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koomey%27s_law) pushing us to reach for parallelisation in search of greater performance gains.
 
 But I digress, I mentioned that everybody is using the BEAM. Is this true? Well, according to Joe Armstrong ca. 2013, Erlang is used in about [half of the world's telecoms infrastructure](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNICGEwmXLU&t=600s). [WhatsApp](https://www.erlang-solutions.com/blog/20-years-of-open-source-erlang-openerlang-interview-with-anton-lavrik-from-whatsapp/) has used Erlang for a very long time, and [Discord](https://elixir-lang.org/blog/2020/10/08/real-time-communication-at-scale-with-elixir-at-discord/) is known to get immense value from Elixir. Discord has contributed some great work to the Elixir ecosystem as well, like [Manifold](https://github.com/discord/manifold) and [Semaphore](https://github.com/discord/semaphore). [Fly.io](https://fly.io/), in particular, and their use of [FLAME](https://fly.io/blog/rethinking-serverless-with-flame/) are very exciting (relatively) recent developments.