Why I’m Leaving Elm
lukeplant.me.uk
Why I’m Leaving Elm
1–10 of 450 posts
Re: Why I’m Leaving Elm
#2That was a long, long one.
Re: Why I’m Leaving Elm
#3Holy Moly. Congrats on such a concise critique; I expect it's hard to spend so much work on the thing you're leaving.
Re: Why I’m Leaving Elm
#4If the post is accurate in the Technical Limitations section I wouldn't touch Elm with a 10 foot pole.
Re: Why I’m Leaving Elm
#5> For example, if there is a bug in any core library, or something missing, you just have to wait for the core team to fix it, rather than being able to fix it yourself. You might need a performance fix, which can be done using Javascript but not in Elm (lack of destructive updates makes some things very hard to implement efficiently), and again you will be stuck having to explain to your boss “I know this is possible in Javascript, but we chose Elm and it makes it very hard”.
Hard pass on Elm if this is true. This is an incredibly damaging accusation, is this consistent with other people's experience using Elm?
Re: Why I’m Leaving Elm
#6Really well reasoned parting letter.
Hoping he'll fare better doing Reason instead. I've tried and haven't had much luck selling it to our local Powers That Be but I understand it's a bit of a nerdy, tough sale.
Re: Why I’m Leaving Elm
#7Long, but I think reasoning was explained very nicely without it reading like an attack on anyone in particular. I would love to read a nice response to this, but personally I will not be looking to use Elm anytime in the future.
Re: Why I’m Leaving Elm
#8> For example, if there is a bug in any core library, or something missing, you just have to wait for the core team to fix it, rather than being able to fix it yourself. You might need a performance fix, which can be done using Javascript but not in Elm (lack of destructive updates makes some things very hard to implement efficiently), and again you will be stuck having to explain to your boss “I know this is possibl…
this is, at least, consistent with my experience using elm on a side project. Dropped elm like a hot potato when I hit that wall.
frustrating, too, because I was really enjoying the language, and everything about it up to that point. The tooling support for Elm is REALLY solid compared to some other functional compile-to-js languages out there.
If anyone is looking for a good functional compile-to-js language, I would suggest taking a look at ReasonML or possibly ClojureScript. Personally, I've just been using TypeScript written in a functional way, and it serves my needs at this point.
Re: Why I’m Leaving Elm
#9> For example, if there is a bug in any core library, or something missing, you just have to wait for the core team to fix it, rather than being able to fix it yourself. You might need a performance fix, which can be done using Javascript but not in Elm (lack of destructive updates makes some things very hard to implement efficiently), and again you will be stuck having to explain to your boss “I know this is possibl…
this is, at least, consistent with my experience using elm on a side project. Dropped elm like a hot potato when I hit that wall. frustrating, too, because I was really enjoying the language, and everything about it up to that point. The tooling support for Elm is REALLY solid compared to some other functional compile-to-js languages out there. If anyone is looking for a good functional compile-to-js language, I woul…
My brief experience has been similar. Elm is a dictatorship that could be wonderful if it didn't exist in the realm of messy html/js. I experience an icky feeling of stockholm-syndrome part of the time, and just plain frustration at other times when dealing with Elm.
What's infuriating is that I do see the benefit of some degree of strict stewardship. It's just that it's too much in this case.
Re: Why I’m Leaving Elm
#10We had a pretty similar experience with elm around cookies. The elm-lang/cookie repo README starts with "Cookies are an ancient mistake of web browsers. They make a bunch of security problems quite easy, so consider this an expert library." However, they never address reading cookies, so if you're using a framework that does CSRF protection with cookies, you have to use ports, which adds quite a bit of complexity for something as simple as making an API request.
Elm looks great on the surface, but once you start digging in you really start to realize it's "there" way or else. It's too bad, the ideas have a lot of promise, but we pivoted away quickly after running into the "core arrogance" a couple of times and went with Typescript/React/Redux.