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Why I’m Leaving Elm

lukeplant.me.uk

251–260 of 450 posts

Re: Why I’m Leaving Elm

#251
post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the leadership problem It's only a problem for the ones who misunderstand the model. It's not a problem, it's by design. It's explicitly setup so that Evan has the final say in everything. > What I mean by "work" is that it leads to successful projects. By a variety of metrics for success. I'm always interested in hearing what metrics people are using for "success", so do please list them so we can be on the same p…

> And yet any attempt to do so is described by them as knifing Elm in the back. Do you have an opinion on open source communities that threaten and seek vengeance against their own forks?

No

Re: Why I’m Leaving Elm

#252

> 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…

https://github.com/Checksum/elm-compiler

I just feel like people are right that the core team is not reasonable but at the same time, if there are that many people that like Elm, why not create a total fork?

It might come down to the people that would care enough to do the fork and a server or whatever have already had so much Koolaid that they just accept those negatives. And the other ones that can't accept it don't like it enough anymore to go to the trouble of making a fork.

But to me it seems like the best outcome is a fork that becomes successful.

Re: Why I’m Leaving Elm

#253
post #182
post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'll find examples on both sides. Rust is a great example of a successful language growing in the open.

Really growing, so much that it's kinda hard to keep up with

Oh please, maybe if all you're doing is reading hackernews articles. The language hasn't really changed that much in the last few years. The only major feature is async/await.

Re: Why I’m Leaving Elm

#254

Earlier 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.

My main objection to using tabs has always been that the Tab key is heavily overloaded: it navigates (one Tab press to move the cursor to the correct indentation point), selects (tab completion), and it puts a variable-width character into my monospace-defined text file.

I'd rather drop the insertion part and have my editor handle adding an appropriate number of spaces.

Let me add this: there's actually nothing stopping you from displaying a four-space indented file as a two-space indented file. Just parse, replace indentation-dictated groups of four spaces with two spaces, you're done.

I don't know of a plugin that does this for $your-favorite-editor but it's, y'know, software. There's nothing which prevents it.

Re: Why I’m Leaving Elm

#255
post #239

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…

You can open a business and yell at customers. Doesn't mean they will stick around or tell others how great your business is. Good projects die because of bad leadership.

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Re: Why I’m Leaving Elm

#256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you use spaces, you can check that files are okay by forbidding \t. If you use tabs, you can check that files are okay by forbidding /^\t* /. If you use tabs for indentation, spaces for alignment, ??????

Forbid "\t* *\t"?

Ok, but if you get "\t[space][space][space][space]", how do you know this wasn't supposed to be "\t\t"? That is, how do you know trailing spaces are for alignment and not for indentation?

Re: Why I’m Leaving Elm

#257
post #22

I‘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 problem is that Elm's crowning achievement is that it took a lot of ideas from functional programming and produced an end product that is stunningly simple and easy to use -- even simpler and easier than most non-functional languages. Speaking as an avid Haskeller who revels in the arcane and abstract, PureScript is just another inaccessible and alien functional language that most people will be immediately turned off by. It's not at all a replacement for what Elm achieved.

Re: Why I’m Leaving Elm

#258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's right[1]; and the author of "Why I'm leaving Elm" understands this, yet claims that it's not possible somehow because the Elm people are hostile to it, and that's one of the reasons the project supposedly isn't really "open source". Something seems a bit off in the reasoning. The only reason you can't fork something is that either you don't have all the code, or there is a license problem. One way not to have…

He doesn't claim it's not possible, he claims that the Elm community will excommunicate you for forking. I can't think of a language or platform that doesn't have some degree of "soft" forking that maintains communion with the language community. It's common for proprietary reasons (linux kernel, anyone?) as well as experimental reasons (e.g. PyPy). So this is an eyebrow raising claim.

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Re: Why I’m Leaving Elm

#259

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…

I've been using Elm happily for 3 years. Thanks for posting this.

Re: Why I’m Leaving Elm

#260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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". But he didn't ask for work to be done anywhere in the article? He asks that he not be prevented from writing code that the compiler supports, but which is arbitrarily limited to members of certain organizat…

> But he didn't ask for work to be done anywhere in the article? He asks that he not be prevented from writing code that the compiler supports, but which is arbitrarily limited to members of certain organizations. That's not asking for work. But that is asking for work! That's a great example of "why don't you just... $TRIVIAL" where $TRIVIAL = "turn off the restrictions", as if there is no consequent problem for the…

In Linux, if you are in userspace or are merged into the kernel tree, they won't break you. Otherwise, you can write your code but kernel upgrades can break your code.

In Elm, it's the same but only a select few can get merged in. The rest get told to rewrite into "userspace" (pure Elm) and find their posts deleted or locked and are accused of being "hostile to Elm's goals". Oh, and you have to patch the kernel before it will load your modules, as it downloads from an official website and checks the Publisher field.

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