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Why I’m Leaving Elm

lukeplant.me.uk

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Re: Why I’m Leaving Elm

#71

Post by holtalanm »

billman wrote: post #44
mercer wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I totally agree with this fustration. There seems to be some innate paradox between growing a community and being a BDFL. I think this also expresses is self in our current political environment.

i'm not sure if we need to be bringing politics up in a programming discussion, but hey, that's just my opinion.

Re: Why I’m Leaving Elm

#72

Post by [deleted] »

beh9540 wrote: post #10

We 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…

[deleted]

Re: Why I’m Leaving Elm

#73

Post by kazinator »

btilly wrote: post #64
kazinator wrote: post #19

I 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…

I 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. That is acknowledged in the article. But the fact is that you can BE open source without doing the things that make open source WORK. [...] Elm users who are not happy should f…

> Why should unhappy Elm users do this instead of going to a language+environment that they don't have to fork to get something usable for them?

Of course they can do that, but then they are not Elm users, which makes them off-topic to the question of what Elm users should do to move forward as Elm users.

> requires a lot less energy and commitment.

We don't actually know that for sure without looking at the size of someone's Elm code base.

Maybe some users also think that Elm is otherwise fantastic and want to stick with it.

For various reasons, changing tooling is not like changing what shampoo you use, except for some language-hopping butterflies who are experimenting with a new thing every week.

Re: Why I’m Leaving Elm

#74

Post by hombre_fatal »

beh9540 wrote: post #10

We 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…

Well, you should be using `httpOnly` cookies (i.e. unusable from the browser) and setting them from the server. Your browser client will automatically send them.

document.cookie is a security vulnerability that's hard to find in any respectable documentation. It's up there with sql string concatenation.

Re: Why I’m Leaving Elm

#75

Post by ivanbakel »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #53

These 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…

>Well, simple: think of the rest of us who don't want every user lib to define its own custom operators.

Then why not simply not use those userlibs? Now it seems you're the one draping a blanket, only yours is over a non-specific hypothetical scenario rather than a real-world problem.

The reality is that people have opinions about things. You have opinions about things. People are going to try to manipulate tools they use because nobody in open-source has any significant amount of learned helplessness over software.

Re: Why I’m Leaving Elm

#77

Post by diggan »

btilly wrote: post #64
kazinator wrote: post #19

I 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…

I 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. That is acknowledged in the article. But the fact is that you can BE open source without doing the things that make open source WORK. [...] Elm users who are not happy should f…

If you're using/contributing to a open source project that is famous for it's non-community development and BDFL leadership style, it should come as no surprise when that continues.

The call for "If you're not happy you should fork the code" comes because this is a explicit expectation of the Elm core team and Evan.

What does "open source work" really mean? Open Source talks strictly about the licensing and distribution of the code itself, not the community and everything around. It feels like everyone are having two conversations at the same time. Open source as we currently know it, is just about the code. Open communities (or whatever you want to call it) is a separate discussion, and not needed to "make open source work" as you just have to license your code in a specific way to be open source.

Then we can discuss what makes open communities around open source code work, but I think that's a separate thread.

Re: Why I’m Leaving Elm

#78

Post by pd-andy »

btilly wrote: post #64
kazinator wrote: post #19

I 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…

I 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. That is acknowledged in the article. But the fact is that you can BE open source without doing the things that make open source WORK. [...] Elm users who are not happy should f…

Because every single one of these posts is "I like Elm, I don't like Evan('s style of leadership)."

All of these leavers could've maintained that fabled community fork they want with the features they want if they all got together.

Re: Why I’m Leaving Elm

#79

Post by marcus_holmes »

jcranmer wrote: post #54
dkersten wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 The other issue is with maximum line length. If you have a maximum line length of 80, do tabs count as 2 spaces, 4 spaces, or 8 spaces towards meeting that line length? Using spaces ensures that it at least looks consistent, independent of your tabstop settings.

Go does this with tabs by either having each arg on its own line, or all on one line. Which totally makes sense.

Re: Why I’m Leaving Elm

#80

Post by jlokier »

For me, the best thing I got from this critique was the link to this 2018 talk by Evan:

The Hard Parts of Open Source, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_4EX4dPppA

I found Evan's talking style really entertaining and enjoyable, and I totally relate to the first part about "why don't you just..." and "have you thought about delegation..."!

The HN comments here are near uniformly negative towards Elm and supportive of Luke's criticisms. Fair enough, it's a reasoned critique and those are definitely issues that would affect users.

I found the critique informative and useful. I don't use Elm though I've watched with passing interest for a while. Now I feel there are gotchas or expectations I should be aware of if I'm considering using it, about the way the project is heading.

But I felt it came off way more entitled than I'm comfortable, mainly when Luke starts moralising, placing ethical obligations upon Evan.

That came over to me as "you are obliged to do a lot more work that I want you to do, on your own time and personal cost, and to stop developing the project according to your own vision or you are a bad person".

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