> To test out the latter, in the summer of 2017 we tasked a team of summer interns with the renewal of our seat map application, a crucial component of the tick

> To test out the latter, in the summer of 2017 we tasked a team of summer interns with the renewal of our seat map application, a crucial component of the ticket booking process. They were to use Elm, a language they had no prior experience with. To our surprise they took to the language very easily, and their work turned out great. I think programmers—myself included—tend to be surprised by these stories, because we envision two learning curves: general programming concepts, plus the additional weirdness of learning Elm. But "general programming concepts" unpacks into: A) valuable stuff everyone needs to learn anyway, B) a bunch of hard-bought mental discipline which Elm makes obsolete, due to its lack of side effects and mutable state. Going cold-turkey into Elm, newcomers fast-forward through a lot of things JS learners for example have to wrestle through. [edit for clarity]