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I've looked into Elm a little bit, read the docs and watched the videos, and I tend to agree with the first paragraph. The architecture is mostly about how to

I've looked into Elm a little bit, read the docs and watched the videos, and I tend to agree with the first paragraph. The architecture is mostly about how to handle updates to a single state machine and render it. There is no deep insight about how to compose stateful components into larger stateful components, and up and up, to build a sophisticated app without things getting out of hand, except: "A component is just a module with types and functions. Compose them however you want." As people build more and more sophisticated widgets with Elm, it pushes the state of the art in this respect, but the problem is still there as far as I can tell.

zoul 9y ago
I think that Elm’s deep insight into composing stateful components is that if you keep important state hidden inside components, it will always hurt.
- dgreensp 9y ago
  "Hidden" isn't the same as implicit. State might be hidden in the sense that it is encapsulated. For example, sometimes we want to treat a text field component as just an "editor for a string value," without worrying about the cursor and selection state, or the state of the autocomplete dropdown if there is one, etc. That said, in the fullness of time, you do eventually find yourself wanting access to this state for some purpose or another. Every time you use an HTML input tag, you are using an abstraction over state, and the first time you need access to the input element's cursor and selection, you realize you've been pretending the element had less state than it had, which is a pretty useful thing to do. If I can write a form component that needs an "editor for a string" component, specified as a type, and fill that need with a "fancy editor for a string" component that has a more elaborate model that I can abstract away, then I think we're in business, but I can't quite picture how that would work.
KurtMueller 9y ago
I like Elm and have been creating little side projects here and there but this is a pain point for me. Richard Feldman recently released an open source large Elm app to show how he structures his models, views, and update functions in a large Elm app. Other than that however, the resources don't exist quite yet - it seems like the Elm community is currently debating this however.

zoul 9y ago

I think that Elm’s deep insight into composing stateful components is that if you keep important state hidden inside components, it will always hurt.

dgreensp 9y ago
"Hidden" isn't the same as implicit. State might be hidden in the sense that it is encapsulated. For example, sometimes we want to treat a text field component as just an "editor for a string value," without worrying about the cursor and selection state, or the state of the autocomplete dropdown if there is one, etc. That said, in the fullness of time, you do eventually find yourself wanting access to this state for some purpose or another. Every time you use an HTML input tag, you are using an abstraction over state, and the first time you need access to the input element's cursor and selection, you realize you've been pretending the element had less state than it had, which is a pretty useful thing to do. If I can write a form component that needs an "editor for a string" component, specified as a type, and fill that need with a "fancy editor for a string" component that has a more elaborate model that I can abstract away, then I think we're in business, but I can't quite picture how that would work.

KurtMueller 9y ago

I like Elm and have been creating little side projects here and there but this is a pain point for me. Richard Feldman recently released an open source large Elm app to show how he structures his models, views, and update functions in a large Elm app. Other than that however, the resources don't exist quite yet - it seems like the Elm community is currently debating this however.