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Elm is Wrong

reasonablypolymorphic.com

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Re: Elm is Wrong

#71

Post by hawkice »

mikekchar wrote: post #42
hawkice wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In truth, it's a balancing act. More than a few Haskell libraries are more tedious than Elm code (I've written upwards of 8,000 lines of production Elm but have been doing Haskell for much longer) because they're so intensely abstract. Without typeclasses, that simply doesn't happen. I'd say 90% or more of Haskell typeclass usage is pointless, and maybe half of what remains is simple to replace with simpler polymorph…

You're way more experienced than me in this, but it seems to me that anywhere you're going to be replacing polymorphism is going to result in more typing. If you know the module that you want, then it is trivial, but the point of type classes (IIUC) is to write generic functions that can act on a variety of types. To replace the non-trivial cases is going to require pattern matching, it seems. If your types change, t…

Typeclasses aren't bad, that's for sure. I kinda want something as flexible as typeclasses and derive generic but no where near that complex. A big part of me says I could do well with just promising some JavaScript really really meets a type signature. Ports are great for side effects but I there might be room for this for pure functions?

Re: Elm is Wrong

#72

Post by amelius »

Singletoned wrote: post #54
sametmax wrote: post #22

I'm not particularly interested in Elm, but basically this post is about one problem in the language. One. This doesn't make the language a pile of garbage as the author seems to let you think. I'm a Python programmer. I fully expect dict keys to be able to be arbitrary objects. But after coding a lot in JS, I realized I could live without it. It's nice, but it's not a show stopper if I don't have it. Same goes here.…

> I'm a Python programmer. I fully expect dict keys to be able to be arbitrary objects. I'm a Python programmer too, and I also fully expect dict keys to be able to be arbitary objects, and I get really frustrated with the fact that they can't be arbitary objects. They have to be hashable objects, and the hash function refuses to hash certain objects that it has decided aren't allowed.

As an aside, what happens in Python when you try to hash objects that contain circular references?

Re: Elm is Wrong

#73

Post by boubiyeah »

mambodog wrote: post #53
bbcbasic wrote: post #26

Unfortunately this is an opinionated piece with foul language and it is a bit offensive. Sandy should take into account that Elm is created by one person pretty much (‎Evan Czaplicki) who created it in his PhD thesis and has been maintaining it since. So it's someones baby still, and they might be offended. It is a remarkable for one person to create a language, runtime, repl, debugger, compiler to another quirky lan…

Elm has inspired ... the development of ReactJS I don't think that's true. React is a descendant of XHP, and predates Elm. Perhaps you were thinking of Redux?

ReactJS introduced virtual DOM before Elm did (Elm first used virtual-dom a lib that was developped quite some time after the release of react, and now uses a new custom implementation) redux was inspired by the "Elm architecture" where everything is global but composed by object/record keys at all levels of the tree.

Re: Elm is Wrong

#74

Post by mmarx »

logicallee wrote: post #58
mikekchar wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It doesn't take "a few weeks" to learn a programming language!!! No, it doesn't. It takes a few hours. Which, I'm sure sounds flippant, but hear me out. In the 25-30 years I've been a professional programmer, I've been paid to use many different languages. FORTH, Fortran, C, C++, Pascal, Protel, C#, Java, Perl, Ruby, Go, Javascript/Coffeescript, and Python are the ones that come off the top of my head, but if I wer…

So my point was actually about the specifics of picking up a language to do a new project , and then complaining about it. (Hence my example of writing a serious book in a language you don't know.) I think you really go into superlatives here. It's not fair for you to say "15 seconds", for example. 15 seconds is how long you've been reading this comment. (I just timed myself, okay maybe 10-13 seconds.) I also think t…

> Okay, so now make a serious iOS app in Objective-C in "a few hours". As in, have one by this time tomorrow. See? It's crazy. That's not how it works.

But then making an iOS app requires picking up frameworks/libraries, not only learning Objective C, which was exactly GP's point:

>> Libraries and frameworks take a lot more time than languages.

Re: Elm is Wrong

#75

Post by sametmax »

Singletoned wrote: post #54
sametmax wrote: post #22

I'm not particularly interested in Elm, but basically this post is about one problem in the language. One. This doesn't make the language a pile of garbage as the author seems to let you think. I'm a Python programmer. I fully expect dict keys to be able to be arbitrary objects. But after coding a lot in JS, I realized I could live without it. It's nice, but it's not a show stopper if I don't have it. Same goes here.…

> I'm a Python programmer. I fully expect dict keys to be able to be arbitrary objects. I'm a Python programmer too, and I also fully expect dict keys to be able to be arbitary objects, and I get really frustrated with the fact that they can't be arbitary objects. They have to be hashable objects, and the hash function refuses to hash certain objects that it has decided aren't allowed.

Come on, how many time in your entire life did you need this ?

For set, it's a bit more annoying. But for dicts. twice in 10 years maybe ?

Re: Elm is Wrong

#76

Post by valw »

boubiyeah wrote: post #64

I don't believe in Elm one bit. it's been 4 years guys. I follow its developement (it's not a hard thing to do after all, it's a snail pace) because its creator is intelligent and there are a few nice things in it. But as a practical platform to build real apps? No way. I mean you can build apps with any tech, so of course people will try and succeed with it; but it's just a bad choice. Elm is impratical because you…

Rejecting a programming language feature because you find it constraining is just ignoring history. Arguments similar to yours have been used to dismiss Garbage Collection, type systems, and even the use of high-level languages, all of which were very successful precisely because they constrain the set of programs you can write.

Also, why all the hate? As you said, neither you or the TypeScript community have any reason to feel threatened by Elm, which nevertheless has had a very positive influence on the mainstream JavaScript community (look at Redux).

The only impact your comment could have is discouraging the Elm community from furthering its valuable research in the field of web development. Please write constructively next time.

Re: Elm is Wrong

#77

Post by boubiyeah »

valw wrote: post #76
boubiyeah wrote: post #64

I don't believe in Elm one bit. it's been 4 years guys. I follow its developement (it's not a hard thing to do after all, it's a snail pace) because its creator is intelligent and there are a few nice things in it. But as a practical platform to build real apps? No way. I mean you can build apps with any tech, so of course people will try and succeed with it; but it's just a bad choice. Elm is impratical because you…

Rejecting a programming language feature because you find it constraining is just ignoring history. Arguments similar to yours have been used to dismiss Garbage Collection, type systems, and even the use of high-level languages, all of which were very successful precisely because they constrain the set of programs you can write. Also, why all the hate? As you said, neither you or the TypeScript community have any rea…

There is no hate here. Elm's current objective is to go mainstream. I just say it's not good yet. I agree with you, Elm is very valuable as a competitor.

Re: Elm is Wrong

#78

Post by ccapndave »

Singletoned wrote: post #54
sametmax wrote: post #22

I'm not particularly interested in Elm, but basically this post is about one problem in the language. One. This doesn't make the language a pile of garbage as the author seems to let you think. I'm a Python programmer. I fully expect dict keys to be able to be arbitrary objects. But after coding a lot in JS, I realized I could live without it. It's nice, but it's not a show stopper if I don't have it. Same goes here.…

> I'm a Python programmer. I fully expect dict keys to be able to be arbitrary objects. I'm a Python programmer too, and I also fully expect dict keys to be able to be arbitary objects, and I get really frustrated with the fact that they can't be arbitary objects. They have to be hashable objects, and the hash function refuses to hash certain objects that it has decided aren't allowed.

http://package.elm-lang.org/packages/eeue56/elm-all-dict/lat...

Re: Elm is Wrong

#79

Post by inglor »

sametmax wrote: post #22

I'm not particularly interested in Elm, but basically this post is about one problem in the language. One. This doesn't make the language a pile of garbage as the author seems to let you think. I'm a Python programmer. I fully expect dict keys to be able to be arbitrary objects. But after coding a lot in JS, I realized I could live without it. It's nice, but it's not a show stopper if I don't have it. Same goes here.…

JavaScript maps can have object keys, you're just using objects as dictionaries. Objects in python don't typically have non-string keys.

```js var m = new Map(); var o = {}; // some object m.set(o, 5); m.get(o); // 5 ```

Re: Elm is Wrong

#80

Post by anentropic »

"my friend and I decided to hackathon our way through an app to help us learn how to play guitar."

this sounds like a great way to never learn to play guitar

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