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Elm changed my mind about unpopular languages

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Re: Elm changed my mind about unpopular languages

#221

Post by username223 »

marcosdumay wrote: post #110
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.

You don't get that choice. You can't select for people that care about your product, but you can select for people that care about some technology. And, if it is a good tech that fits your business, why wouldn't you?

> You can't select for people that care about your product, but you can select for people that care about some technology.

If that's true, it's kind of awful. "'Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? / That's not my department', says Wernher von Braun."

Re: Elm changed my mind about unpopular languages

#222

Post by hesarenu »

s4vi0r wrote: post #38
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…

The communities for languages like Elm are definitely smaller, but they're also "passion languages", if that makes sense. Nobody is learning elm because they've been or feel forced to (like you might with React, eg) or because they needed to maintain a legacy codebase at an old job or something. They're learning it because they're interested/like it, etc. So when it comes time to hire you have a small(er) pool of can…

React was small at one time even if backed by Facebook. I was passionate about it even before it became popular and still am.

Re: Elm changed my mind about unpopular languages

#223

Post by always_good »

brokenbyclouds wrote: post #197
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…

Worth noting is that you haven't been able to find a single criticism of elm in years. You hired the language designer so it's understandable that you'd have an easier time with the language. However, you've consistently kicked dust in everyone's eyes every time anyone has anything remotely critical to say about elm. It's frustrating because you are so smart and so insightful and it just looks like you're deliberatel…

It's a bit inappropriate and sheepish and start wailing on someone's random comment with a toothless rant like that.

For anybody to take you seriously, you need to put more effort into it than just being disgruntled.

Re: Elm changed my mind about unpopular languages

#224

Post by DisownedWheat »

rtfeldman wrote: post #217
brokenbyclouds wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worth noting is that you haven't been able to find a single criticism of elm in years. You hired the language designer so it's understandable that you'd have an easier time with the language. However, you've consistently kicked dust in everyone's eyes every time anyone has anything remotely critical to say about elm. It's frustrating because you are so smart and so insightful and it just looks like you're deliberatel…

Elm doesn't support code splitting or `insertRule` styling, both of which are important for performance. `elm-package` is currently piggybacking GitHub's infrastructure instead of having its own hosting. I think Elm should have more patch releases. I don't think `comparable`, `number`, or especially `appendable` should be in the language, and hope they get removed someday. I don't think `==` should be `a -> a -> Bool…

I'm always impressed by your ability to keep cool when someone seems to be making a personal attack (though I'd like to assume they aren't). I think Elm/Evan is lucky to have you as a kind of evangelist.

Re: Elm changed my mind about unpopular languages

#225

Post by leshow »

api wrote: post #31
mooreds wrote: post #2

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…

This is correct but sad. It's why better languages like Elm and Rust struggle to gain acceptance while inferior but well marketed efforts like Swift dominate.

Woah. I love Rust and program in it super often, but I've looked at Swift also and it seems like an incredibly capable language. It has similar capabilities for algrebraic types, and a "typeclass" like approach to parametric polymorphism. Also if I'm not mistaken, Graydon, the creator of Rust works on it now.

What makes you say Swift is inferior? It seems like a huge improvement over ObjC.

Re: Elm changed my mind about unpopular languages

#226

Post by b0rsuk »

I wonder how to become a good functional programmer. I think I'm already decent at procedural/OO.

Do I need to have a strong maths background? I didn't learn it very well at university and this worries me. Many functional language fans seem to have degrees in maths.

Re: Elm changed my mind about unpopular languages

#227

Post by leshow »

yawaramin wrote: post #213
sidlls wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That isn't static typing.

- You can specify types - Types are checked before run time - Type errors are reported If that's not static typing, what is?

What is a static or strong type system is sort of up for debate, the terms are not well defined. Not OP, but IMO type annotations are static but not strong. I'd consider a strong type system one that enables you to encode additional invariants in the types, with sum and product types being perhaps the minimal requirement.

Re: Elm changed my mind about unpopular languages

#228

Post by always_good »

Retra wrote: post #216
isostatic wrote: post #79

I 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.

This is why I'll never be a web developer. "Let's drop names! I made bridges out of Wood.io, then I used Steel (TM), now I use Stone.js. What's fun, now there's data in the kiddie pool!" It feels like watching a cult of optimization function in a culture where measurement is taboo. It's absurd beyond belief.

That's fine. I don't think the ecosystem needs any more people that get their blood pumping over some inconsequential name reuse.

To get Elm confused with the email client with this title, you'd have to not know the Elm language existed. So it seems like it's a moment to go "oh I see, that exists" than cursing the world because you thought "Elm changed my mind about unpopular languages" somehow referred to an email client.

But I get it. It's cathartic to be angry on the internet. The angry shadow boxing just gets pretty old for the rest of us no matter what kind of developer you are.

Re: Elm changed my mind about unpopular languages

#229

Post by quickthrower2 »

anonytrary wrote: post #208

> Even though Elm is a small language with a small community, that doesn’t affect the Elm experience in a noticeable way. This conclusion was pulled out of thin air, with no justification from the rest of the article. The title is misleading, the article is really about why the author enjoys Elm over JavaScript... The general rule of thumb that a larger active community leads to faster software development is more or…

> The general rule of thumb that a larger active community leads to faster software development is more or less still true. There is no reason to suspect this is not the case with Elm.

Yes, and not only because the volume of copy-paste source code on StackOverflow. I suspect Elm is slower to get a feature out, but once it is out you spend less time fixing bugs in feature A caused by adding feature B silently changing some assumptions you made in code. And so later on in the same project ... you are faster.

> It's all fun and games until you get hired to build a production-grade web stack in a dinky game-scripting language with no community, that you have written 0 lines of code in. Some people live and breath to reinvent wheels in 19 different languages. Not my cup of tea.

From what I have seen Elm is absolutely fit for production grade work. There is a community. The community tends to have smarter on average people in it. Simply because all the less smart people are put off. Sounds elitist? Maybe.

Re: Elm changed my mind about unpopular languages

#230

Post by _sdegutis »

b0rsuk wrote: post #226

I wonder how to become a good functional programmer. I think I'm already decent at procedural/OO. Do I need to have a strong maths background? I didn't learn it very well at university and this worries me. Many functional language fans seem to have degrees in maths.

Math isn’t required. FP is about thinking of data structures and transformations from A to B. If you’ve ever used underscore.js, you’ve probably used FP patterns and functions. Map, filter, reduce are all part of that.
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