Ask HN: Is Elm Dead?

#1

Post by felixguendling » Mon, May 23, 2022, 9:31 PM UTC

Elm looked very promising when it was new and made continuous progress for a while. But now the GitHub repositories don't show activity anymore. https://github.com/elm/compiler

Web technology is still moving fast and Elm just stopped. The version number indicates that it's still unstable (breaking changes expected).

The number of participants in 'State of Elm' also indicate declining interest: https://state-of-elm.lamdera.app/

Some ideas are really nice, so it would be a bummer if it dies.

Did I miss something?

Re: Ask HN: Is Elm Dead?

#2

Post by hereforphone » Mon, May 23, 2022, 10:27 PM UTC

I thought this would be about the email client.

Re: Ask HN: Is Elm Dead?

#3

Post by pawelduda » Mon, May 23, 2022, 11:12 PM UTC

IIRC the main problem of Elm that it was one man show and the author was really restrictive about allowing anyone else contribute to the core. At least that's when I lost interest. Not sure what happened between then and now. It was one of these risky "niche squared" bets so maybe that's why it never took off.

Re: Ask HN: Is Elm Dead?

#4

Post by darepublic » Mon, May 23, 2022, 11:26 PM UTC

Typescript became popular

Re: Ask HN: Is Elm Dead?

#5

Post by stefanos82 » Mon, May 23, 2022, 11:40 PM UTC

Seems pretty alive to me https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vexdf-Rd-AE

Re: Ask HN: Is Elm Dead?

#6

Post by [deleted] » Mon, May 23, 2022, 11:48 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Is Elm Dead?

#7

Post by ProfXponent » Tue, May 24, 2022, 12:06 AM UTC

pawelduda wrote: post #3

IIRC the main problem of Elm that it was one man show and the author was really restrictive about allowing anyone else contribute to the core. At least that's when I lost interest. Not sure what happened between then and now. It was one of these risky "niche squared" bets so maybe that's why it never took off.

This is the main reason I never used it for more than toy apps.

Personally I think the programming model works pretty well

Re: Ask HN: Is Elm Dead?

#8

Post by hnuser847 » Tue, May 24, 2022, 12:23 AM UTC

It’s been dead for years, which is a shame because it was downright the most enjoyable front-end framework/language I had ever worked with. Sure, there’s nothing stopping you from picking it up and writing an app with it right now, but you’re doing so knowing that the language will likely never have future updates going forward.

Re: Ask HN: Is Elm Dead?

#9

Post by incel » Tue, May 24, 2022, 12:45 AM UTC

No post body was provided.

Re: Ask HN: Is Elm Dead?

#10

Post by danbruder » Tue, May 24, 2022, 1:02 AM UTC

it is very much alive. it’s lack of churn is a feature not a bug.