Earlier quoted context omitted.
isn't this the exact problem that tabs solve?
You might as well ask if he likes vim or emacs :)
nano or nothin'!
Why I’m Leaving Elm
51–60 of 450 posts
Re: Why I’m Leaving Elm
#52This criticism is spot on; it is exactly what I observed in late 2018, early 2019 as well. It's an awesome language, but there is basically a big case of 'vendor lock-in'. Certain compiler features are only available to the maintainers, nor is there any way to use alternative package sites. I don't want to know what would ever happen if the Elm developers decide to take https://package.elm-lang.org offline. That will…
That's not correct, you can just inline any package into your vendor folder in your project. And the package website is just an index, the sources need to be on github in the first place (this has some problems too), but if the website is down, you can still grab them from github.
Here's the relevant section from the article for this comment.
https://lukeplant.me.uk/blog/posts/why-im-leaving-elm/#why-d...
Re: Why I’m Leaving Elm
#53These posts (and HN comments) really make me wonder if adopters of fringe languages are always going to be thin-skinned developers who get emotional when they realize they won't be part of the language's design decisions. That "On Whose Authority" rant about Clojure complains about the exact same things. And I'll refer to Rich Hickey's response: https://old.reddit.com/r/Clojure/comments/73yznc/on_whose_au....
Elm in particular has this weird problem where there are vocal people in the community who you can count on to drape a wet, accusatory blanket over every discussion, and you wonder why they can't just find another language that they do like. Sometimes you need to leave the theater so other people can enjoy the show.
Also what are these languages yall are using where you're part of steering committee level decisions?
This blog post is full of the usual suspect complaints, like being annoyed that a language can use features like custom operators but they can't in their user lib even though most people would agree that user packages shouldn't be able to invent yet more custom operators. It's such a weird jealousy for a point to be "but core libs can do it, why not me? :(". Well, simple: think of the rest of us who don't want every user lib to define its own custom operators. But the complainer here gets hung up on what seems like an ego / entitlement issue.
Re: Why I’m Leaving Elm
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
isn't this the exact problem that tabs solve?
Yep! If people used tabs, then everyone can display it how they like and these stupid discussions wouldn’t be necessary. Alas, for some reason the world has rallied behind spaces. Sigh.
It doesn't really solve the problem. How do you format this code with tabs:
function name(arg1, arg2,
arg3 Using spaces ensures that it at least looks consistent, independent of your tabstop settings.
Re: Why I’m Leaving Elm
#55Arrogant is the most accurate word to describe Elm and its leadership. I tried to use Elm in production between 0.14 and 0.18 versions and it was fun and mind expanding experience. I'm truly grateful that I've used it because it introduced a lot of functional stuff to me. But I no longer use it myself or recommend it for any serious work. Breaking changes were negligible in the beginning. But I got fed up with rewrit…
I can't tell if this is satire or not. Just because a language is open source does not mean it's a perfect democracy.
Re: Why I’m Leaving Elm
#56We 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…
I remember seeing that repo a few years ago when assessing using Elm for a project. I, also, went with Typescript and React based on that README and the issue full of folks pleading for the package to be restored.
Re: Why I’m Leaving Elm
#57I‘m not sure why this hasn’t been mentioned by anyone: If you’re unhappy with Elm‘s constraints the obvious solution is to switch to PureScript (purescript.org). It’s basically are more powerful Elm like language with a great FFI and absolutely no constraints how to work with JavaScript. There are also a lot of compatibility packages to provide functions and workflows from the Elm ecosystem.
The learning curve to PureScript is way higher than Elm. Is that not that obvious?
It is, but the community is pretty awesome and helpful, and anyone who knows Elm and takes the time to read at least one introductory Haskell book should be able to get productive pretty quickly.
Re: Why I’m Leaving Elm
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
If you feel the same way about the Elm project as the author of the article does, you won't be happy with Clojure[script] either. Its community already went through this drama and all the top community contributors(or that at least tried to contribute) left.
I can't speak to Elm, but I'd say the Clojure/Script fiasco wasn't really one sided. Some of the "contributors" not getting their way wasn't like they were wanting to push some amazing improvements. Most of the time, the reason for things not going through is actually disagreement on the impact the change would have to the language, and people complaining about how slowly the discussion around it can happen to drive agreement.
Basically my point is, some people like me are happy that there's a high bar of entry for contributions and that every change is carefully considered, even if sometimes that means changes happens more slowly.
Don't know if that could be true of Elm as well?
Re: Why I’m Leaving Elm
#59I don't agree with everything here. Open source really does mean that you just have all the code to rebuild the thing from scratch under the right sort of license. Open source doesn't mean anything else, like having access to design decisions. Interaction style and personalities are also not part of the definition of open source; open source doesn't mean nobody is brusque or abrasive. Some communities have additional…
Agree. I'm gonna be honest and say I haven't finished the entire article so author might have elaborated further after, but I got a chill when reading the following passage:
> The second is that if you advertise something as Open Source, there is a common set of assumptions about what that means, some of which are explicit in accepted definitions of the term.
It seems the "common set of assumptions" is around that people can get involved and actually have impact on the direction of the project, but that's not at all included in the actual definition of open source. https://opensource.org/osd
And I'm starting to see this sentiment crop up more and more recently, where someone open sources something just to share the code, while people expect the maintainers/creators to fit their project to their worldview. I think this misconception is the source of many throwing a fit on GitHub in issues/PRs where the maintainers won't change something based on the user's views.
Open source is and should continue to be about that you are free to fork the code if you don't like the direction. Otherwise, assume nothing from others work they publish for you to use for free.
Edit: I continued reading and found bunch of more passages where the authors understanding of open source seems to be incorrect. Some examples:
> Bu I think this claim is increasingly hard to defend. For me, real Open Source goes beyond a LICENSE file.
> I’d like to see some kind of openness in the development process before I considered something to be Open Source
> It seems that Evan and the core team have forgotten that languages, especially Open Source ones, operate as platforms, and in these platforms contributions from other developers and reputation are critical.
> Fairness must be a central principle in any Open Source project
While I agree that these things are nice, they are in no way required to called a project Open Source. Open Source is strictly about the software that is under the license, not the community/company around it. The creator and maintainers are free to accept/deny any patches they feel like, and project should still be considered open source, as long as the _actual_ requirements of open source are followed.
Re: Why I’m Leaving Elm
#60I don't agree with everything here. Open source really does mean that you just have all the code to rebuild the thing from scratch under the right sort of license. Open source doesn't mean anything else, like having access to design decisions. Interaction style and personalities are also not part of the definition of open source; open source doesn't mean nobody is brusque or abrasive. Some communities have additional…
Your suggestion for the problems with this project is "Why don't you just fork it and maintain your own?"
That's what forking entails.
It's a bit like Brexit. You don't get to stay in the club.
If there are sufficient people unhappy with Elm but are cohesive enough to push the compiler forward, then why not?