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Elixir v1.20: Now a gradually typed language

elixir-lang.org

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Re: Elixir v1.20: Now a gradually typed language

#81

Post by zuzululu »

keithnz wrote: post #74

seems ironic that critics were saying, it needs typing, and all the elixir fans were saying you don't need typing, you don't get bugs related to typing because elixir is somehow magic, now they get typing and it finds bugs for them.... but you said you didn't need that to prevent bugs? But good to see! I spent a bunch of time trying out Elixir a while back, I enjoyed it, but just didn't agree with the lack of types.

I think Elixir is interesting and there is real value but some stuff being sold as "all these libs/packages that haven't had any updates for over a year is fine because Elixir" I just don't buy it

and to that point around typing feels like the same wish-washy hand waving from the community that is very off putting

BEAM has genuine use cases but its not as wide as its made to believe. There are very good places where that is a perfect fit but it simply cannot upend Typescript.

Elixir feels very similar to how Clojure started getting traction and then ultimately forgotten apart from its die hard fans, I'm not saying Elixir will go the same way but seems very hard for something new and bold to replace what is popular and boring.

I do want Elixir to succeed (also Clojure as well and I advocated for it for a bit) but the low number of jobs still puts it in similar proximity to Clojure but BEAM I think would still provide uplift where Clojure simply could not

Re: Elixir v1.20: Now a gradually typed language

#82

Post by pdpi »

keithnz wrote: post #74

seems ironic that critics were saying, it needs typing, and all the elixir fans were saying you don't need typing, you don't get bugs related to typing because elixir is somehow magic, now they get typing and it finds bugs for them.... but you said you didn't need that to prevent bugs? But good to see! I spent a bunch of time trying out Elixir a while back, I enjoyed it, but just didn't agree with the lack of types.

> you don't get bugs related to typing because elixir is somehow magic,

I've never followed Elixir particularly closely, but what I saw in some Erlang discussions was different. Discourse there was that you need to gracefully handle failure anyhow, so type errors can (should?) just get handled by the failure recovery machinery you're supposed to have anyhow. I disagree with that point of view, but it's much more defensible than "$LANGUAGE is magic".

Re: Elixir v1.20: Now a gradually typed language

#83

Post by klibertp »

senderista wrote: post #65
shevy-java wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> writing Elixir is like writing Erlang I wrote both Elixir and Erlang code. Erlang is just useless to me as a programming language; it has many great ideas though. I love the idea of being able to think in terms of immortal, re-usable, safe objects (Erlang does not call these objects, but to me this is OOP by Alan Kay's definition. I don't use e. g. the java definition for OOP.) Elixir built on that and made Erlang…

I agree that actor languages are the purest form of OOP as Alan Kay has expressed it. And unlike Smalltalk, Erlang just accepts that some things are naturally functions, not messages.

Smalltalk has no problem at all with accepting that some things are naturally functions: it has always had blocks! The call operator is `value`, not `()`, but it's the same "apply a piece of code to some values" operation.

Re: Elixir v1.20: Now a gradually typed language

#84

Post by ramchip »

keithnz wrote: post #74

seems ironic that critics were saying, it needs typing, and all the elixir fans were saying you don't need typing, you don't get bugs related to typing because elixir is somehow magic, now they get typing and it finds bugs for them.... but you said you didn't need that to prevent bugs? But good to see! I spent a bunch of time trying out Elixir a while back, I enjoyed it, but just didn't agree with the lack of types.

> you don't get bugs related to typing because elixir is somehow magic

Really? All the Elixir fans were saying that?

Re: Elixir v1.20: Now a gradually typed language

#85

Post by OtomotO »

Yes!

I have the great luck to work in many different stacks as a freelancer.

One of them is Elixir. While I am on this project for just half a year and not too many hours per week, I can say: I absolutely love this language.

It reminds me of Haskell, which I had courses on at university, and is just an absolute joy to work with.

My only gripe was that there was no typesystem. So I was eyeing Gleam (as I also like Rust very much), but as Gleam doesn't and probably never will support Ecto and Phoenix (due to it not supporting macros), it's a nogo for the project at hand.

I knew Elixir was to gain a typesystem, still this is absolutely fantastic news. Super stocked to work with this.

Re: Elixir v1.20: Now a gradually typed language

#86

Post by pjmlp »

Xeronate wrote: post #78
keithnz wrote: post #74

seems ironic that critics were saying, it needs typing, and all the elixir fans were saying you don't need typing, you don't get bugs related to typing because elixir is somehow magic, now they get typing and it finds bugs for them.... but you said you didn't need that to prevent bugs? But good to see! I spent a bunch of time trying out Elixir a while back, I enjoyed it, but just didn't agree with the lack of types.

It was the same thing with javascript/typescript and python. Sometimes you just have to let people think what they want.

The irony is that dynamic languages that predated them had optional typing.

BASIC, Smalltalk vs Strongtalk, Common Lisp, Dylan

It is the eternal September.

Re: Elixir v1.20: Now a gradually typed language

#87

Post by josevalim »

zuzululu wrote: post #81
keithnz wrote: post #74

seems ironic that critics were saying, it needs typing, and all the elixir fans were saying you don't need typing, you don't get bugs related to typing because elixir is somehow magic, now they get typing and it finds bugs for them.... but you said you didn't need that to prevent bugs? But good to see! I spent a bunch of time trying out Elixir a while back, I enjoyed it, but just didn't agree with the lack of types.

I think Elixir is interesting and there is real value but some stuff being sold as "all these libs/packages that haven't had any updates for over a year is fine because Elixir" I just don't buy it and to that point around typing feels like the same wish-washy hand waving from the community that is very off putting BEAM has genuine use cases but its not as wide as its made to believe. There are very good places where…

> some stuff being sold as "all these libs/packages that haven't had any updates for over a year is fine because Elixir" I just don't buy it

I maintain more than 20 packages and, except for the major ones, like Phoenix and Ecto, they haven't been updated in more than a year and yes, they are all fine.

The language has been extremely stable. There has been almost no breaking changes in over a decade. Case in point: we introduced a whole gradual type system without making any changes to the language surface! The language is still on v1.x!

Re: Elixir v1.20: Now a gradually typed language

#88

Post by losvedir »

Oooh, here we go! As a professional Elixir developer for... 10-ish years now, I've been super excited about types coming. I'm very excited that the beginnings have started to land here.

That said, I would love to know how the state of what's in v1.20 compares to un-spec'ed dialyzer. I was under the impression that dyalizer's "success typing" approach (not flagging a function if there are some combination of parameters such that it works, rather than flagging it if some combination of parameters can make it fail) was like what Elixir is doing here, and I haven't found dialyzer terribly useful.

Re: Elixir v1.20: Now a gradually typed language

#90

Post by mrcwinn »

keithnz wrote: post #74

seems ironic that critics were saying, it needs typing, and all the elixir fans were saying you don't need typing, you don't get bugs related to typing because elixir is somehow magic, now they get typing and it finds bugs for them.... but you said you didn't need that to prevent bugs? But good to see! I spent a bunch of time trying out Elixir a while back, I enjoyed it, but just didn't agree with the lack of types.

Please share that conversation you reference where the community said Elixir doesn’t need types because it is magic.
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