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Elm at Rakuten

engineering.rakuten.today

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Re: Elm at Rakuten

#11

Post by mechelephant »

folex wrote: post #5

Elm is awesome, its compiler is awesome, but its ecosystem is kinda stalling, isn't it? I mean, a lot of libraries aren't updated to the last lang version, debugging JS-Elm interactions been a real challenge for years, yadda yadda. Overall I'd say Elm ecosystem doesn't receive enough attention to survive. I'm not complaining, I'm just sad about that and kinda surprised I didn't found a mention of that in the OP artic…

I would argue the opposite! The elm slack is very active with people who frequently contribute to the ecosystem. I don't think the "a lot of libraries aren't updated to the last lang version" is true, the vast majority are.

Debugging elm-JS interactions is not really a problem when using the standard interop methods of ports and webcomponents. It's just not something that comes up often.

Source: have been writing elm professionally for the last 2 and a half years.

Re: Elm at Rakuten

#12

Post by dimitrios1 »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #2

Interesting breakdown of some pros and cons of using Elm in production. However, it appears the JavaScript codebase they used for comparison was quite bad and maybe not representative of a good or even typical JavaScript app: > Our JavaScript application had global variables everywhere, and debugging was a nightmare Point #3 in their list of cons is especially important for anyone considering Elm: > Because Elm is no…

> but it’s not ideal if you’re trying to run a lean team that ships products quickly.

Good. The longer I do this, the longer I realize that unless your in a race-to-the-bottom industry (something like vying for eye balls to increase ad spend), then this is categorically a bad thing. I would prefer the quality of engineering required in knowing how to do some of these things yourselves.

Take your time. Understand what you are doing. Some of the world class technologies we all know and use daily use minimal dependencies.

And with more malicious code entering more package repositories, it might be apt advice more than ever today.

Re: Elm at Rakuten

#13

Post by jaeming »

folex wrote: post #5

Elm is awesome, its compiler is awesome, but its ecosystem is kinda stalling, isn't it? I mean, a lot of libraries aren't updated to the last lang version, debugging JS-Elm interactions been a real challenge for years, yadda yadda. Overall I'd say Elm ecosystem doesn't receive enough attention to survive. I'm not complaining, I'm just sad about that and kinda surprised I didn't found a mention of that in the OP artic…

As I understand it, there was a rift in the community over the leadership's tone in messaging and communication. Some Developers also felt like they could not contribute in a meaningful way or have constructive discussion with maintainers.

See posts like these for more details and comments:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16510267

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22821447

There are also several great alternatives now. F# with Fable and Elmish for example: https://zaid-ajaj.github.io/the-elmish-book/#/

And Bucklescript TEA with Ocaml or Reason: https://github.com/OvermindDL1/bucklescript-tea

Some others have also gone on to develop new languages taking inspiration from Elm: https://www.mint-lang.com/

Re: Elm at Rakuten

#14

Post by [deleted] »

dimitrios1 wrote: post #12
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #2

Interesting breakdown of some pros and cons of using Elm in production. However, it appears the JavaScript codebase they used for comparison was quite bad and maybe not representative of a good or even typical JavaScript app: > Our JavaScript application had global variables everywhere, and debugging was a nightmare Point #3 in their list of cons is especially important for anyone considering Elm: > Because Elm is no…

> but it’s not ideal if you’re trying to run a lean team that ships products quickly. Good. The longer I do this, the longer I realize that unless your in a race-to-the-bottom industry (something like vying for eye balls to increase ad spend), then this is categorically a bad thing. I would prefer the quality of engineering required in knowing how to do some of these things yourselves. Take your time. Understand what…

[deleted]

Re: Elm at Rakuten

#16

Post by jeofken »

sergiotapia wrote: post #15

I'll never even consider Elm after they added DRM to the compiler. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27819874

Would it not be to prevent supply chain attacks, and to guarantee the user that all code you run is pure and type safe?

They don’t hinder anyone from forking and removing this limitation, allowing any package author to run native code on your machine.

Re: Elm at Rakuten

#17

Post by rtfeldman »

jaeming wrote: post #13
folex wrote: post #5

Elm is awesome, its compiler is awesome, but its ecosystem is kinda stalling, isn't it? I mean, a lot of libraries aren't updated to the last lang version, debugging JS-Elm interactions been a real challenge for years, yadda yadda. Overall I'd say Elm ecosystem doesn't receive enough attention to survive. I'm not complaining, I'm just sad about that and kinda surprised I didn't found a mention of that in the OP artic…

As I understand it, there was a rift in the community over the leadership's tone in messaging and communication. Some Developers also felt like they could not contribute in a meaningful way or have constructive discussion with maintainers. See posts like these for more details and comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16510267 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22821447 There are also several great alterna…

Honestly I think the main reason for this perception is that people in the Elm community have gotten increasingly tired of correcting inaccuracies people like to post about Elm on Hacker News.

I spent a bunch of time doing that in the past, and eventually stopped because I felt like Sisyphus. The same people would crop up on the next thread repeating the same things anyway. Of course if the claims go unchallenged, it leads to the perception that they're accurate...but that doesn't make engaging with them any more enjoyable a way to spend one's free time.

If you want to check the health of the Elm community, visit Elm Slack and ask in the #beginners channel how people feel about it. It takes about the same amount of time as posting a HN comment, but it gives a very different perspective than the one you'd get if your main source of Elm information was Hacker News comments! :)

http://elmlang.herokuapp.com/

Re: Elm at Rakuten

#18

Post by blowski »

g_delgado14 wrote: post #10
5350-uiop-1130 wrote: post #6

Wouldn't it be difficult to find other developers that are experienced using Elm? I don't know much about it tbh. Probably, one of my biggest career mistakes was opting for a little known PHP cms instead of WP as I thought it would be easier for the stakeholders to work with the limited options. Since then, I've always avoided going away from the mainstream toolset.

> Wouldn't it be difficult to find other developers that are experienced using Elm? Yes, however: - Elm has a very small surface area (you can read through the guide [0] in a weekend) - There are many folks who love functional programming && are willing to learn Elm So, given those two facts, the lack of Elm developers compared to other "markets" is not a big issue. For me, personally, the only risk with Elm is its i…

I appreciate that I am biased because of my background, but I've met precisely one person who's used Elm while just about every dev I know has worked with WordPress at some point. For most enterprises I work with, 10 years in production is about close as they're willing to get to the bleeding edge. They don't really care about code quality or features. They want to be safe, secure and future-proof for as low a price as possible.

That said, I know very little about Elm and would love to understand more about what it offers that's so exciting. I skim-read the article, will read in more detail later.

Re: Elm at Rakuten

#19

Post by theobeers »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #2

Interesting breakdown of some pros and cons of using Elm in production. However, it appears the JavaScript codebase they used for comparison was quite bad and maybe not representative of a good or even typical JavaScript app: > Our JavaScript application had global variables everywhere, and debugging was a nightmare Point #3 in their list of cons is especially important for anyone considering Elm: > Because Elm is no…

From the opening section of the blog post, I wondered why an incremental move to TypeScript wouldn’t have worked for them. The rest seems to be all about Elm (I haven’t read it thoroughly), but I feel there’s a disconnect between the problem they started with and their choice to dive into a wholly new ecosystem.

edit: Ah, hold on; I just got to where they comment on this. “TypeScript, which adds optional static typing to JavaScript and is probably one of the best things to happen to JavaScript, can partially mitigate the issues with the JavaScript dynamic type system. But being a superset of JavaScript it needs to compromise on elegance and simplicity. It also has several ‘blind spots.’” etc. I don’t know that I’m 100% convinced.

Re: Elm at Rakuten

#20

Post by moistoreos »

aaronchall wrote: post #7

I'd like to recommend Elm at work but I can't because it's still below a major version of 1, which implies there may be a good deal of rework in the short term. I did get an Elm app upgraded from 0.18 to 0.19 without too much extra work, but I'm concerned a major version release may bring much more changes.

https://github.com/elm/compiler/blob/master/roadmap.md
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