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Elm changed my mind about unpopular languages

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Re: Elm changed my mind about unpopular languages

#161

Post by always_good »

matte_black wrote: post #70

I feel unpopular languages are best relegated for niche use cases the language is well suited for. If you are going to build something mundane like a CRUD App or a game, or an ERP, why wouldn't you just use some mundane blue-collar language like Javascript or its equivalent? What you are doing isn't new or groundbreaking, so why bother bringing in extra drama and ceremony by using a language very few people use to ac…

> why wouldn't you just use some mundane blue-collar language

Because for something so mundane then it really doesn't matter what you use and you know the domain so well that you can recover from any hangups.

I certainly don't consider it self-evident that you always just use mundane solutions to mundane problems. Depends on your appetite for risk and how biz-critical the problem is.

Re: Elm changed my mind about unpopular languages

#162

Post by Latty »

brabel wrote: post #14

I'm a Java dev with just some basic experience writing functional code, mostly in Java/Kotlin/Groovy/Ceylon (all of which are primarily imperative!). Can confirm: Elm is awesome, easy to pick up as long as you understand basic things like union types and immutability, and I found myself productive in it within a single day!

I notice Scala missing from your list - if you need the JVM or find Elm to not quite have what you need, it's a great language. It's basically the opposite end of the spectrum, design-wise - Elm is "let's create this highly opinionated, carefully curated language and try to make it perfect" and Scala is "let's throw every feature we can derive into our type system and let people work it out".

It's got it's issues (mostly that it's incredibly easy to abuse powerful features), but it also has a ton of stuff I really miss in other languages.

I have a web-based party game (CaH clone) I wrote in Scala for the back-end, Elm for the front-end. It's a bit old (I'm planning a rework and update when the next version of Elm comes out), and it's definitely not the best code ever as it's a hobby project, but you might be interested.

https://github.com/lattyware/massivedecks

Re: Elm changed my mind about unpopular languages

#163

Post by kjksf »

dozzie wrote: post #160
onebot wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't you want people that care about your product instead of the technology behind it? I do. Because there may come a time when another technology is a better fit for your product and ultimately your customer's experiences. Then what? Now your not using elm and your team leaves or is disgruntled. I hire on passion for what we are trying to accomplish, not the technology stack.

> Don't you want people that care about your product instead of the technology behind it? I do. I would rather have people who care about their craftsmanship and are indifferent about the product than people who care about the product and are indifferent about the craftsmanship. The former ones do a good job regardless of what the product is about.

"caring about craftsmanship" != "caring about elm"

I care about craftsmanship even when I'm writing JavaScript.

And when JavaScript is enough of a burden, I go to TypeScript, not Elm.

Re: Elm changed my mind about unpopular languages

#164

Post by gsvclass »

I built this in browser database app entirely in ELM. Since there is no existing rich component library available I had to write everything including a high performance grid implementation from scratch. The entire app took about a week and has zero runtime bugs since launch. I have to give credit to Elm for most of that.

https://bellpluscat.com/

Re: Elm changed my mind about unpopular languages

#165

Post by galfarragem »

joshribakoff wrote: post #29
innocentoldguy wrote: post #22

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…

The recording of steps is called event sourcing and both vuex and redux implement the pattern, I'm sure elm is great but that benefit is not unique to elm https://martinfowler.com/eaaDev/EventSourcing.html

Elm's creator is a visionary [1]. E.g. Redux took inspiration from his thoughts. Rust's compiler error messages also. It was rather common on elm core newsgroup to see him asking for secrecy on new ideas before releasing a new version of Elm.

The negative part is that Elm's development is rather slow and not pragmatic. This is painful on the short term - specially if you come from JS land..

[1] An example of a (great) conceptual talk: https://www.deconstructconf.com/2017/evan-czaplicki-on-story...

Re: Elm changed my mind about unpopular languages

#166

Post by krotton »

jimbokun wrote: post #137
crdoconnor wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Provided you dangle enough money and have a good interview process you can easily cull those people who can't code themselves out of a wet paper bag. The thing that would worry me about niche languages is the amount of wheel reinvention you'd have to do. Not sure the cost/benefit calculation starts to look so great any more when you realize that your enthused elm developers will have to build a whole lot of stuff tha…

Not sure how Elm interacts with Javascript libraries, but JVM languages can generally use any existing Java libraries. So a language built on a popular run time (JVM, .Net VM, guess there's exactly two), can still have excellent library support.

...or Node.js nowadays, so three, I guess.

Elm nicely abstracts over JS interoperability with a mechanism called ports: https://guide.elm-lang.org/interop/javascript.html

Re: Elm changed my mind about unpopular languages

#167

Post by annywhey »

matte_black wrote: post #150
nogridbag wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find this line of reasoning a bit strange. I've only dabbled a bit with some unpopular languages, but I don't think their limited popularity implies they're only suitable for niche use cases. In fact after using some languages (most recently Clojure) I find programming in other mundane languages like JS a huge step backwards. People are probably the biggest determining factor in achieving a quality result. But I do…

It’s not just about the language itself. You might think Japanese is an awesome language and decide to learn it, but then what use is speaking Japanese outside of Japan? Around the world people still just use boring ol’ English, even though English is actually a pretty shitty language and full of hacks to make up for weird edge cases (read and read, goose and geese, mice and meese?, Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo bu…

I have thought about this problem some and currently see it as an issue of scaling thresholds.

If it's literally just you, there's a lot of benefit to leveraging existing work so that you can focus on the differentiating part of the project(which is probably not a language innovation). It's not just the libraries but the whole ecosystem - example code, troubleshooting help, IDE support.

If you have an engineering team of even modest size, the picture can change very swiftly towards ensuring your result is built on a solid foundation, even if it means a lot of pioneering infrastructure has to be built and a lot of late nights spent debugging core toolchain issues. Team efforts have the necessary momentum to break free and do that ground work as the overhead gets swiftly absorbed in "person-year" budgetary terms. Individuals can only really justify the same as their core direction of research, sole hobby, or speculative investment - e.g. being the "first to implement" some hot new standard could be a well incentivized career move.

Re: Elm changed my mind about unpopular languages

#168

Post by not_kurt_godel »

_d8fd wrote: post #124
soulnothing wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to ask, do you guys have the catch 22. Of we want you to have worked in it professionally before? I'm being totally serious. I worked in Elm, and loved it. I tried to get it in several positions I worked at. Applied to a few elm positions, but was told I needed prior professional experience. So moved all my personal projects to React so I could be more marketable. My day job is still using java server faces, o…

Just tinker with Elm at work on your lunchbreak and say you uswd it at work. If you're awesome, no one will know and/or care where you picked up your awesomeness.

> say you used it at work

Please don't do this. If you're not found out in the interview, you'll be found out on the job eventually due to your obvious lack of experience. Some of my most personally loathed coworkers have been people who have bullshitted their way into positions by claiming skills they don't have or aren't qualified in, making them a nightmare to work with.

Re: Elm changed my mind about unpopular languages

#169

Post by kod »

czardoz wrote: post #156
rtfeldman wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worth noting that in our experience, hiring has gotten way easier for us since we became an Elm shop. We really struggled to hire React engineers (who have a zillion positions to choose among - why would they pick ours?), whereas there seem to be a lot more great programmers who want to use Elm than there are companies hiring for Elm positions. Here's a verbatim quote from a cover letter (one I happened to be reading…

Kinda off topic, but isn't it a better practice to not hire for specific technologies, but go for good fundamentals?

Yes, but having worked in an ML family language is a good proxy for having certain fundamentals

Re: Elm changed my mind about unpopular languages

#170

Post by soulnothing »

not_kurt_godel wrote: post #168
_d8fd wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just tinker with Elm at work on your lunchbreak and say you uswd it at work. If you're awesome, no one will know and/or care where you picked up your awesomeness.

> say you used it at work Please don't do this. If you're not found out in the interview, you'll be found out on the job eventually due to your obvious lack of experience. Some of my most personally loathed coworkers have been people who have bullshitted their way into positions by claiming skills they don't have or aren't qualified in, making them a nightmare to work with.

This can get really messy. Using it on your job, creates a one-off orphan that no one knows how it works. Then I've seen a number of people claim they used it but didn't

I've also found this as a partial negative. Positive you took initiative, and want to learn. Negative you've now written a product that only you can maintain, and doesn't listen well.

I go down the honest path. Of I did a proof of concept, or scratch project in this language. But didn't get the buy in from the rest of the team. Which sometimes leads to why am I not good at sailing new technologies.

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