41–50 of 321 posts
'bit of an odd thinking considering Evan's aversion to high-minded abstractions.
My question is, how will he feel about this three years from now? When he is trying to hire someone? Or when the folks behind Elm don't update it as often as they should? The problem with unpopular languages is twofold: * lack of talent that can step right in and be effective * lack of resources to push the language forward The first can be remediated by planning to bring new hires up to speed, and just making that i…
Worth noting that in our experience, hiring has gotten way easier for us since we became an Elm shop. We really struggled to hire React engineers (who have a zillion positions to choose among - why would they pick ours?), whereas there seem to be a lot more great programmers who want to use Elm than there are companies hiring for Elm positions. Here's a verbatim quote from a cover letter (one I happened to be reading…
When I'm wearing by "be productive" hat, I don't, either, but how realistic is that? Unless you've memorized the bug database for your compiler, running into a known bug is just as frustrating as discovering a new one, and I'm pretty sure I've run into at least a few bugs in every compiler I've ever used. According to my comments, my current flagship program has workarounds for 5 (known) compiler bugs.
I'd love to use only stable bug-free compilers (maybe Forth?), but I'm not sure that's practical. A more reasonable solution is to only use the popular parts of languages -- though apparently I'm not so great at discerning what those are, either!
> Elm requires that you think through all the edge cases. You must consider and specify what will happen in every case. Wouldn't that be the case with _every_ typed and compiled programming languages (or at least, every typed and compiled programming languages that support pattern matching)?
Not to the same extent, Elm: * sum types and exhaustive pattern matching (incidentally, still not the default in GHC in 2018 because reasons[0]) * has only one escape hatch of "Debug.crash", which it strongly recommends not using and which it seems many Elm devs aren't even aware exists (in my avowedly shallow experience) * and which you use as bottom by hand-rolling pattern matches * at which point you might as well…
Elm is awesome. I just wish much more people and companies would adopt it (and ClojureScript) so it would gain popularity close to that of TypeScript. This could make the web (and the frontend job market) a better place.
I agree. I think TypeScript is a decent language, but after working with the DOM in a functional way, verses object-oriented and imperative paradigms, I don't think I'll ever go back. To paraphrase and hijack what the author stated, HTML feels like it was created for Elm (and functional programming in general). I'd add HTTP to that as well. The combination just feels right.
My question is, how will he feel about this three years from now? When he is trying to hire someone? Or when the folks behind Elm don't update it as often as they should? The problem with unpopular languages is twofold: * lack of talent that can step right in and be effective * lack of resources to push the language forward The first can be remediated by planning to bring new hires up to speed, and just making that i…
Worth noting that in our experience, hiring has gotten way easier for us since we became an Elm shop. We really struggled to hire React engineers (who have a zillion positions to choose among - why would they pick ours?), whereas there seem to be a lot more great programmers who want to use Elm than there are companies hiring for Elm positions. Here's a verbatim quote from a cover letter (one I happened to be reading…
I worked in Elm, and loved it. I tried to get it in several positions I worked at. Applied to a few elm positions, but was told I needed prior professional experience. So moved all my personal projects to React so I could be more marketable. My day job is still using java server faces, or django templates largely.
As noted above there are pros and cons. But if you're using a fringe language/tech and allow your team to contribute back upstream. That helps immensely. One of the other stands out I can think of is Jane Street and OCaml.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Regarding the second point, As a counter-argument, it’s not certain that languages and frameworks from major vendors will continue to be supported either. For example Microsoft deprecated various UI frameworks, Firefox extensions are changing, and so on. (I’m sure there are better examples I can’t think of at the moment.)
Sure, large vendors deprecate stuff all the time. But you'll probably have plenty of notice and they'll have a path for your existing applications to follow. It may be painful, but it won't be catastrophic. Contrast that with what would happen if No Red Ink went out of business and the author of Elm couldn't find a job that would allow him to continue to develop it. Things would be fine for months or years but eventu…
There is so much to love about Elm. It is a typed language, so it eliminates typing issues, like 1 + "1" = "11". Its compiler is great. The compiler catches almost everything and offers easy-to-read suggestions to fix your code when there is a problem. Elm's compiler virtually eliminates runtime errors; at least I've never had a runtime error with Elm. I also like the debugger. It allows you to easily capture your st…
I mostly agree with your point here, but in this specific example I actually think Perl did the right thing, where
1 + "1"
"1" + 1
1 + 1
"1" + "1"
1 . "1"
"1" . 1
"1" . "1"
1 . 1
>You can go through the whole development lifecycle of the app and you’ll rarely encounter a situation where you can’t find a fix online in 5 seconds. Somebody else has already worked out the kinks. My strategy was flawless.