I see that the current version is 0.18. Curious if the language has become more stable with fewer breaking changes than when I looked at it two years ago.
It actually has... due to not having any major release in 2 years.
Elm changed my mind about unpopular languages
71–80 of 321 posts
Re: Elm changed my mind about unpopular languages
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm a little confused. React isn't a language, or at least I thought it wasn't a language. When I hire people I'm not the least bit interested in which JavaScript framework they have already used. I kind of assume that if you can learn one you can learn them all. The idea of labelling yourself a react engineer seems really limiting to me
Where does that specialization stop, reasonably? Isn't this the same with JavaScript? If you have worked with any Algol-derived language you can learn them all.
In theory it doesn't stop. Most developers have the capacity to learn anything. In reality though I've found its more that some Devs are not willing to work with certain languages.
Re: Elm changed my mind about unpopular languages
#73This is common reaction to Elm and especially to Elm. I also use Elixir and it has great community and everything, but somehow Elm is even more. All the concerns about 'unpopular' languages, lack of tooling, I feel it is quite the opposite. Elm formatter changed how I work and now I started using it in other languages, Elixir and JS are using it more, or maybe I just started paying more attention. There are other sma…
When you say smarter programmer I understand what you mean. But the way I look at it, Elm allows me to relax and be a dumber programmer. I commit my smarts up front to the type design and interfaces between types and then I can relax as the project grows from there because the compiler will enforce the invariants I've encoded into the types. Pure Bliss.
Re: Elm changed my mind about unpopular languages
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is always a risk with new tools and techs. Thankfully there are sometimes enough early adopters to help keep the new thing in motion and improving. Considering that a lot of code that gets written is thrown away or otherwise doesn't survive for years, a bit of risky experimentation isn't actually as risky as it seems. Even though I'm one of the never-satisfied/always-seeking-newer-better group (and my list of us…
> This is always a risk with new tools and techs. Absolutely. Whenever I see a new project, I look at business risk and technology risk. Either one is OK, but both are not. (I picked that up from someone, don't remember who). I think that there's real value to being a Tom Bombadill (and really learning a language/framework/problem space deeply) as opposed to being a Gandalf. However, one fundamental issue is it's eas…
I have pondered about this depth vs breadth approach for some time. My path has made me a generalist who learns and does whatever I think is necessary in a given situation. This is great because I can do anything. But I envy the domain experts who do one (or a related few) things VERY well.
Perhaps it depends much on the mind of the person; I don't think I could just focus on one thing forever. But while the new shiny tech guys may seem to have more opportunities, I believe the domain experts may get paid more and have more of their career time spent as "recognized leaders".
It's probably good that people are all different, and both types (and all in between) exist.
Re: Elm changed my mind about unpopular languages
#75I don't get it. The author didn't address his original concerns, he just said "Elm is awesome", which may be true, but isn't a rebuttal of his previous points, which are condensed here: >You can go through the whole development lifecycle of the app and you’ll rarely encounter a situation where you can’t find a fix online in 5 seconds. Somebody else has already worked out the kinks. My strategy was flawless.
I suspect the missing connection is this: if you encounter a conceptual/technical bug with a popular language/framework, you can find a solution online quickly. If you write buggy code (especially bugs that don't reveal themselves until live in production) it involves much, much more pain to fix those. Elm helps significantly with the latter.
That's one of the points he raised, and I see the value now. However, the author also talks about the dangers that come from using lesser-known, using unstable languages (he mentions finding bugs in the compiler, segfaults, and so on), and he doesn't say how Elm solves them
Re: Elm changed my mind about unpopular languages
#76My 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…
I think the hiring woes problem for languages like this is a reasonable hypothesis, but I've never seen any actual evidence for it. I constantly hear from folks who are worried that they will have this problem, and frequently hear folks saying they tried it and it wasn't a problem (see sibling comments, for example). I'm not sure I've ever heard from someone who has actually had this problem.
Try hiring for obscure and legacy, like delphi. My employer has had this problem for years.
Re: Elm changed my mind about unpopular languages
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure, large vendors deprecate stuff all the time. But you'll probably have plenty of notice and they'll have a path for your existing applications to follow. It may be painful, but it won't be catastrophic. Contrast that with what would happen if No Red Ink went out of business and the author of Elm couldn't find a job that would allow him to continue to develop it. Things would be fine for months or years but eventu…
Actually, I used to work with Evan Czaplicki (the author of Elm) at Prezi around 2015. He was laid off with a bunch of other employees during a “reorg”. It didn’t seem to have affected Elm.
That's not a ringing endorsement of Elm's commercial viabity. Prezi hired the Elm creator and funded Elm development and then ran out of money to pay him.
Re: Elm changed my mind about unpopular languages
#78Haskell has enormous momentum now[1], and it's speed of development is accelerating. I came to it not because it was cool, but because my experience maintaining and refactoring a big Python program had become really painful. Haskell lets me keep the codebase smaller, it's easier to be pretty sure things are working, it's easier to refactor, and I'm sure the language will only keep getting better. Those are all unders…
That's been the story of Haskell for over 10 years. The world and other language ecosystems are changing faster than Haskell is growing.
Clojure and Scala give you an alternative to Python that have the power of the Java ecosystem to take your programming out of academic and toy projects.
And Python finally has static typing, 10 years after it was announced.
Re: Elm changed my mind about unpopular languages
#79I used to use Elm, then I moved to Pine, then Mutt (which is still going strong)
I guess there's only so many names in the world, and they're bound to be reused.
Re: Elm changed my mind about unpopular languages
#80Haskell has enormous momentum now[1], and it's speed of development is accelerating. I came to it not because it was cool, but because my experience maintaining and refactoring a big Python program had become really painful. Haskell lets me keep the codebase smaller, it's easier to be pretty sure things are working, it's easier to refactor, and I'm sure the language will only keep getting better. Those are all unders…
That has exactly been my experience as well, and the reason why I decided to work with Haskell professionally instead of continuing to write Python, Elixir or what have you.
On to the topic of this submission itself, Elm turned out to be a gateway drug to Haskell for me. Similar to Paul Chiusano[1] I decided to switch from Elm to GHCJS (Haskell). I started with https://haskell-miso.org/ (based on the Elm architecture) but I'm currently developing using http://docs.reflex-frp.org/
[1] https://pchiusano.github.io/2015-04-23/unison-update7.html