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> First, Elm has the natural predictability of a pure functional language; when you write Elm, the compiler forces you to consider every case. I'm a beginner with functional languages, but isn't the type system completely orthogonal to the fact that Elm is a functional language?
Better than, say, assembly language.
I also like the debugger. It allows you to easily capture your steps as you click around your application, save those steps into a file, and send that file to other developers, which allows them to run through your steps on their own machine; seeing Elm's output at each stage. It works like a "steps to reproduce" bug report, only automated, which makes finding and fixing difficult bugs easy.
There is a lot of good documentation for Elm as well. Elm's documentation itself is good. Manning and Pragmatic Programmers both have good books on Elm (both are still early access versions though). Pragmatic Studio also has an excellent video course on Elm for about $60 (https://pragmaticstudio.com/courses/elm), if you're interested in learning it.
My question is, how will he feel about this three years from now? When he is trying to hire someone? Or when the folks behind Elm don't update it as often as they should? The problem with unpopular languages is twofold: * lack of talent that can step right in and be effective * lack of resources to push the language forward The first can be remediated by planning to bring new hires up to speed, and just making that i…
It can be a useful filter in both directions. I'm more impressed with prospective employers who have an onboarding plan including some reasonable model of a learning curve than prospective employers who assume "oh, we use popular language/framework/tooling x/y/z, so if we find someone who knows these specific things, onboarding will be a snap or practically take care of itself."
> First, Elm has the natural predictability of a pure functional language; when you write Elm, the compiler forces you to consider every case. I'm a beginner with functional languages, but isn't the type system completely orthogonal to the fact that Elm is a functional language?
You're completely correct, though for whatever reason functional languages almost always have strong type systems.
Elm is awesome. I just wish much more people and companies would adopt it (and ClojureScript) so it would gain popularity close to that of TypeScript. This could make the web (and the frontend job market) a better place.
Wouldn't that be the case with _every_ typed and compiled programming languages (or at least, every typed and compiled programming languages that support pattern matching)?
> Elm requires that you think through all the edge cases. You must consider and specify what will happen in every case. Wouldn't that be the case with _every_ typed and compiled programming languages (or at least, every typed and compiled programming languages that support pattern matching)?
There is so much to love about Elm. It is a typed language, so it eliminates typing issues, like 1 + "1" = "11". Its compiler is great. The compiler catches almost everything and offers easy-to-read suggestions to fix your code when there is a problem. Elm's compiler virtually eliminates runtime errors; at least I've never had a runtime error with Elm. I also like the debugger. It allows you to easily capture your st…
There is so much to love about Elm. It is a typed language, so it eliminates typing issues, like 1 + "1" = "11". Its compiler is great. The compiler catches almost everything and offers easy-to-read suggestions to fix your code when there is a problem. Elm's compiler virtually eliminates runtime errors; at least I've never had a runtime error with Elm. I also like the debugger. It allows you to easily capture your st…