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Why I’m Leaving Elm

lukeplant.me.uk

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Re: Why I’m Leaving Elm

#281

Post by jeremyjh »

EdSchouten wrote: post #14

This 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…

> This criticism is spot on; it is exactly what I observed in late 2018, early 2019 as well.

These issues were obvious much earlier than that. I looked into Elm and was excited about it initially, in either late 2013 or early 2014. Then I looked into the history of some of the design decisions that baffled me (such as lack of type classes) and concluded the project was poorly conceived and led. The leadership didn't respect the opinions or capability of its end users.

Re: Why I’m Leaving Elm

#282

Post by Myrmornis »

mrozbarry wrote: post #210

Original author of the elm-firebase ( https://github.com/pairshaped/elm-firebase ) here. While I think Elm certainly has some rough patches in both their aggressively PC community and the immaturity of the language (still many breaking changes, not 1.x, etc.), it's not that awful. I was told that elm-firebase was basically a waste, and don't use native modules, so I stopped development. I didn't need to make a big st…

The author didn’t “need” to, he decided to. It’s not clear how your own actions, or lack thereof, pertain here.

Re: Why I’m Leaving Elm

#283

Post by Talanes »

fxtentacle wrote: post #144
jlokier wrote: post #80

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 L…

The article's criticism about the 0.18 to 0.19 issues is spot-on, but I agree with you that the author comes off as feeling entitled. The reason why Elm is fun to work with is that it's Evan sharing his hobby project with you. And that's it. There is no support, no long-term maintenance, no implied warranty, nothing. Still, it works for me :) and it is Open Source in the way that I can fix bugs myself, if I have to.…

If something is just your personal, no-pressure, hobby project, maybe don't convince people to implement it in production?

Re: Why I’m Leaving Elm

#284

Post by hombre_fatal »

jfkebwjsbx wrote: post #199
hombre_fatal wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

SQL string concatenation is fine. You mean parameter concatenation (into the query string).

Call it whatever you want, but everyone knows what "SQL string concatenation" is referring to wrt injection. I don't think a finer point is necessary.

Re: Why I’m Leaving Elm

#285

Post by mdtusz »

bartread wrote: post #278
bwanab wrote: post #141

After reading a large number of the responses here, I feel like I've noticed a pattern - two types of comments: 1) I've used the language and agree with the conclusions of the post even if I don't necessarily agree with every point. 2) I haven't used the language, but I believe open source projects must be maintained by their maintainers as they see fit. I actually agree with both of these positions, but, having used…

> But, as many others have pointed out, if one has to maintain a project over the years, the breaking changes in the language would have caused great bouts of teeth gnashing. This isn't just a problem for Elm but for front-end development in general. Not so much because of JavaScript the language, but because of the libraries and, to a much lesser extent, the browser APIs. In the library and framework space many take…

A fantastic example of this _not_ happening in js libraries though is Plotly.js. It's still on a 1.x release and has maintained backwards compatibility (for the most part) with the original API for _years_.

Full disclosure, I used to work there (specifically, on plotly.js).

Re: Why I’m Leaving Elm

#286

Post by hitekker »

bwanab wrote: post #141

After reading a large number of the responses here, I feel like I've noticed a pattern - two types of comments: 1) I've used the language and agree with the conclusions of the post even if I don't necessarily agree with every point. 2) I haven't used the language, but I believe open source projects must be maintained by their maintainers as they see fit. I actually agree with both of these positions, but, having used…

There's also the third type of comment: the outright, raging denials from Elm enthusiasts.

If anything turns me off a programming language, it's the righteous fury a community rains down upon its naysayers.

Re: Why I’m Leaving Elm

#287

Post by okareaman »

mrunkel wrote: post #111
ar-nelson wrote: post #13

I haven't used Elm, so I have no horse in this race. But I feel like I've been hearing these stories for a while, that it started out as an interesting and useful language but kept having features removed in new versions. Since it's open-source, and apparently there are existing projects in older versions of Elm that would effectively be held hostage by these feature removals, I'm amazed there hasn't been a (well-kno…

They could call it pine.

Name it Ruth so Elm and Ruth can be in relation like in the poem "Elm" by Sylvia Plath: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49003/elm

Re: Why I’m Leaving Elm

#288

Post by hitekker »

mrozbarry wrote: post #234
bmurphy1976 wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what many people (myself included) have done. Unfortunately by not sharing our experiences, others will have to learn things the hard way. If Evan is entitled to run Elm however he wants, Luke is entitled to post whatever criticism he wants on his own blog. If nobody ever speaks up, do you think things will actually ever get better?

To be clear, I don't have a problem with Luke posting his experience, but there's a difference between reporting the news and reporting your feelings. I think about half that article could be deleted, and it would still hold content of "why I'm leaving," but without building this huge drama oriented narrative.

> without building this huge drama oriented narrative.

One person's distress is another person's "drama", I suppose.

Re: Why I’m Leaving Elm

#289

Post by yaktubi »

bartread wrote: post #278
bwanab wrote: post #141

After reading a large number of the responses here, I feel like I've noticed a pattern - two types of comments: 1) I've used the language and agree with the conclusions of the post even if I don't necessarily agree with every point. 2) I haven't used the language, but I believe open source projects must be maintained by their maintainers as they see fit. I actually agree with both of these positions, but, having used…

> But, as many others have pointed out, if one has to maintain a project over the years, the breaking changes in the language would have caused great bouts of teeth gnashing. This isn't just a problem for Elm but for front-end development in general. Not so much because of JavaScript the language, but because of the libraries and, to a much lesser extent, the browser APIs. In the library and framework space many take…

I haven't written any Java for a very long time, but I know that C# code I wrote back in 2004 targetting .NET 1.1 would still run substantially unmodified today on the latest .NET runtimes[1] - in fact I'm pretty sure some of it is.

Re: Why I’m Leaving Elm

#290

Post by d0100 »

haolez wrote: post #43
dbrgn wrote: post #20

This post resonates with me. I'm not deeply involved in Elm, I just have an Elm side project (started on 0.17) with roughly 1k lines of code. Do I love Elm? Yes, definitely. It's such a well-designed language. Lots of thought went into it. It's very focused and has great (albeit sometimes non-obvious) solutions for almost everything. However, the leadership style is also what keeps me from recommending Elm to anyone…

This kind of leadership gave us Go. It's not necessarily bad. If everyone gets their way with the language specs, then all languages will look like a weird dialect of C++ :)

How are the Go leadership style and what OP described even remotely the same?

Language safe-guarding, maybe.

Imagine having your production code hostage to your relationship with the language authors...

Go leadership makes me feel like the language is safe and reliable.

The Elm leadership, as described by OP, just triggers my "its a sect" alarm

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