Live data from Hacker News

IBM releases Elm-powered app

discourse.elm-lang.org

1–10 of 199 posts

Re: IBM releases Elm-powered app

#2
I don't understand why this is noteworthy.

I think maybe this is when you decide 'maybe our language has failed'. Or at least admit it's a toy language that hasn't been properly engineered to be effectively used commercially. When it's a 'worth mentioning' when a single app has been written in it by some dying company.

I mean, imagine if we had a headline on the frontpage of HN for every app written in C or C++ or Java or Python (or Objective-C or Swift or C# or even Visual Basic or Rust)

Steve Yegge said it best almost 10 years ago: https://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2010/12/haskell-researchers...

Functional languages are great toys but nobody uses them to get work done, almost without exception.

Re: IBM releases Elm-powered app

#5

I don't understand why this is noteworthy. I think maybe this is when you decide 'maybe our language has failed'. Or at least admit it's a toy language that hasn't been properly engineered to be effectively used commercially. When it's a 'worth mentioning' when a single app has been written in it by some dying company. I mean, imagine if we had a headline on the frontpage of HN for every app written in C or C++ or Ja…

I think this is interesting to me because Elm is an extremely unique way of doing frontend development on the web by utilizing functional programming concepts.

IBM, in my mind, is a massive dinosaur. To know that some group there was able to make a consumer facing product using the latest tech is cool. Definitely gives IBM a better favorability rating in my view.

Re: IBM releases Elm-powered app

#6
post #5

I don't understand why this is noteworthy. I think maybe this is when you decide 'maybe our language has failed'. Or at least admit it's a toy language that hasn't been properly engineered to be effectively used commercially. When it's a 'worth mentioning' when a single app has been written in it by some dying company. I mean, imagine if we had a headline on the frontpage of HN for every app written in C or C++ or Ja…

I think this is interesting to me because Elm is an extremely unique way of doing frontend development on the web by utilizing functional programming concepts. IBM, in my mind, is a massive dinosaur. To know that some group there was able to make a consumer facing product using the latest tech is cool. Definitely gives IBM a better favorability rating in my view.

Not to be glib, but what you are saying, kind-of, is "the worse a company is at staying up to date with technology, the more meaningful it is if they use a fringe langauge"

Re: IBM releases Elm-powered app

#7

I don't understand why this is noteworthy. I think maybe this is when you decide 'maybe our language has failed'. Or at least admit it's a toy language that hasn't been properly engineered to be effectively used commercially. When it's a 'worth mentioning' when a single app has been written in it by some dying company. I mean, imagine if we had a headline on the frontpage of HN for every app written in C or C++ or Ja…

I think it is newsworthy because it details the strengths and weaknesses of Elm in what looks like a fairly complex project. I already use and like Elm better than any other front-end framework, but if I was considering Elm as a possibility, this information would be quite useful, I think.

Definitely not the most important thing on the list, but I use Vim to code so IDE integrations mean absolutely nothing to me. I hate IDEs. To companies and teams that can't go to the bathroom without an IDE, that may be a deal breaker. Either way, it is good information to have.

Re: IBM releases Elm-powered app

#8
In a comment below the main post they say that the app they wrote is approximately 45,000 lines of code over 170 Elm files.

That's one of the largest (and apparently most useful) Elm apps in the wild that I've heard of, and the fact that it exists and they had an overall good experience with it inspires me even more to try to learn and use Elm.

Re: IBM releases Elm-powered app

#10

I don't understand why this is noteworthy. I think maybe this is when you decide 'maybe our language has failed'. Or at least admit it's a toy language that hasn't been properly engineered to be effectively used commercially. When it's a 'worth mentioning' when a single app has been written in it by some dying company. I mean, imagine if we had a headline on the frontpage of HN for every app written in C or C++ or Ja…

Could you be more condescending.
Post reply on HN