11 ms·

Having a hard time choosing between Svelte and Elm. For a lone in house dev, any recommendations?

by xupybd 7y ago

orthoxerox 7y ago
Plug Elm compiler into Svelte to create a monster, ensure your name will be cursed by those who follow you.
ampdepolymerase 7y ago
Their approaches and style are completely different. Try both.
stanislavb 7y ago
I'd say Svelte is much closer to "regular" programming. You will have to bend your thinking a bit with Elm. Svelte seems great, but it seems to be developed by one person primarily. Also, that person lives in NY and the project looks paused at the moment.
- stanislavb 7y ago
  p.s. Svelte is great, and I can't wait to start working more actively with it.
- tobr 7y ago
  What makes you say it looks paused? There’s been a very steady stream of releases since the big 3.0 launch last spring. There’s certainly more than one active contributor, although the core team is just a few people.
- PudgePacket 7y ago
  It just had a major release :P any faster and people would be complaining about churn !
- untog 7y ago
  Looking at the Github commits I’d say neither statement is true? Seems to be plenty of contributors that have contributed recently: https://github.com/sveltejs/svelte/commits/master https://github.com/sveltejs/svelte/commits/master
- arkanciscan 7y ago
  That person is also a jerk (in my experience)
  - pts_ 7y ago
    Elaborate please.
    - arkanciscan 7y ago
      It was a Twitter exchange that's been deleted so I can't remember the details. Suffices to say he was rude to me and that's colored my opinion of Svelte ever since.
      - donohoe 7y ago
        Well, as someone who has met him several times I found him witty, kind, and a very friendly fellow. I'm sure you are a very nice person but it is possible someone out there thinks you're a jerk despite that.
- wolfadex 7y ago
  By "regular" programming do you mean JavaScript?
chvid 7y ago
React
tomerbd 7y ago
Use Elm for fun and React/Svelte for Profit
IshKebab 7y ago
The problem with Svelte is it doesn't support Typescript. You pretty much need that on any reasonable size project unless you are happy to spend your life tracking down runtime bugs. Vue has a similar problem (it sort of supports Typescript, but not properly and templates aren't type checked). I've not used Elm so maybe that is better. React has good support for type checking. I would use that.
- orange8 7y ago
  > Typescript. You pretty much need that on any reasonable size project unless you are happy to spend your life tracking down runtime bugs I'd say it depends on your teams skill set and level of disciple. The best defence against a buggy codebase isn't a programming language or framework, its good all fashioned discipline.
  - bambataa 7y ago
    Don’t need to catch bugs if you just don’t write them! taps head. It is still worthwhile imo to have something that catches mistakes even great people make.
    - orange8 7y ago
      I completely agree. That something is a linter, of which TypeScript is just one of the many options available. This whole idea of you cannot write a big app in JS is just peddled by those who do not understand, or hate JS. A good linter, proper programming practices, discipline will get you there. Anytime someone peddles a language or framework as a magic bullet to clean code, they're either selling you some snake oil or have drunk too much of some koolaid, imho.
      - giantDinosaur 7y ago
        This is the kind of attitude that has resulted in a million code vulnerabilities in C because the idea that it's inherently unsafe is just an idea 'peddled by people unskilled in its application' (to re-express nicely). It's the kind of attitude which will ignore the many inconsistencies in languages which were the result of historical accident instead of good design because it's just a blind acceptance of the way things turned out to be rather than what they _could_ be. Many who go on about 'discipline' are often creating error prone applications and, ironically, peddling 'discipline' as that very magic bullet to cure all ills. I don't know if I've even seen discipline defined beyond some self-referential 'avoid doing these bad things that our language/environment allows by knowing that they're bad before you make the mistakes that show you they're bad'. Do developers just shrug and accept it as a fundamental design constraint to good programming languages when their booleans add with their integers and concatenate with their strings and give essentially random results? Do they not wonder: is there a system, more fundamental than linting, which can solve many of these issues in a general case?
maps7 7y ago
I picked up Svelte recently and I am happy with it. There is good documentation and examples and any questions I had were already answered online. I haven't used Elm yet.
adelarsq 7y ago
Try F#. Has good tooling and its possible to use the ELM arch. See https://zaid-ajaj.github.io/the-elmish-book https://zaid-ajaj.github.io/the-elmish-book
- xupybd 7y ago
  Thank you this looks great. Okay now another tool to try. This is tricky business when you're looking for the tool set you want to invest in for the next 2 to 5 years and there are so many promising options.
saila 7y ago
I used Svelte 3 for a fairly complex side project last year (rewrote it from React), and it's my favorite JS framework so far. I do wish the TypeScript story was better though. I've also used Elm for another little side project, and it was super fun to learn, but it was a bit mind-bending at first. I think Svelte is a fairly safe choice because it's actively developed and because it's not too different from Angular/React/Vue. If there's any possibility that you'll have to hand this code over to someone else, I think Elm is a much less safe choice. So, to echo tomerbd's reply: Elm for fun; Svelte for profit.
- wolfadex 7y ago
  Just a reminder that Svelte, in Rich Harris's own words, is a language and not a framework. It technically isn't JavaScript, just an incredibly similar syntax.
wolfadex 7y ago
While I primarily use Elm for all my front end side projects, I do think it's worthwhile to try both. I'm currently writing a blog about trying as many front end frameworks/languages as I can. I'm going with this approach because I want to see what I can learn from each of them. For example, I've learned from Elm that compilers can be much friendlier. I've learned from Svelte that people are more willing to accept what appears to be familiar. You may learn something completely different.
hitekker 7y ago
Prezi, the original company that backed Elm, laid-off the maintainer and then deprecated Elm in their codebase.
- rgoulter 7y ago
  I wasn't aware of that context. Though evancz now works at NoRedInk. https://www.noredink.com/about/team https://www.noredink.com/about/team
michaelcampbell 7y ago
If you haven't yet, find and read the lengthy "why I'm leaving elm" post; there's a big discussion here also. May provide some impetus one way or the other for you.

Having a hard time choosing between Svelte and Elm. For a lone in house dev, any recommendations?

by xupybd 7y ago

Having a hard time choosing between Svelte and Elm. For a lone in house dev, any recommendations?

orthoxerox 7y ago

Plug Elm compiler into Svelte to create a monster, ensure your name will be cursed by those who follow you.

ampdepolymerase 7y ago

Their approaches and style are completely different. Try both.

stanislavb 7y ago

I'd say Svelte is much closer to "regular" programming. You will have to bend your thinking a bit with Elm. Svelte seems great, but it seems to be developed by one person primarily. Also, that person lives in NY and the project looks paused at the moment.

stanislavb 7y ago
p.s. Svelte is great, and I can't wait to start working more actively with it.
tobr 7y ago
What makes you say it looks paused? There’s been a very steady stream of releases since the big 3.0 launch last spring. There’s certainly more than one active contributor, although the core team is just a few people.
PudgePacket 7y ago
It just had a major release :P any faster and people would be complaining about churn !
untog 7y ago
Looking at the Github commits I’d say neither statement is true? Seems to be plenty of contributors that have contributed recently: https://github.com/sveltejs/svelte/commits/master https://github.com/sveltejs/svelte/commits/master
arkanciscan 7y ago
That person is also a jerk (in my experience)
- pts_ 7y ago
  Elaborate please.
  - arkanciscan 7y ago
    It was a Twitter exchange that's been deleted so I can't remember the details. Suffices to say he was rude to me and that's colored my opinion of Svelte ever since.
    - donohoe 7y ago
      Well, as someone who has met him several times I found him witty, kind, and a very friendly fellow. I'm sure you are a very nice person but it is possible someone out there thinks you're a jerk despite that.
wolfadex 7y ago
By "regular" programming do you mean JavaScript?

chvid 7y ago

React

tomerbd 7y ago

Use Elm for fun and React/Svelte for Profit

IshKebab 7y ago

The problem with Svelte is it doesn't support Typescript. You pretty much need that on any reasonable size project unless you are happy to spend your life tracking down runtime bugs. Vue has a similar problem (it sort of supports Typescript, but not properly and templates aren't type checked). I've not used Elm so maybe that is better. React has good support for type checking. I would use that.

orange8 7y ago
> Typescript. You pretty much need that on any reasonable size project unless you are happy to spend your life tracking down runtime bugs I'd say it depends on your teams skill set and level of disciple. The best defence against a buggy codebase isn't a programming language or framework, its good all fashioned discipline.
- bambataa 7y ago
  Don’t need to catch bugs if you just don’t write them! taps head. It is still worthwhile imo to have something that catches mistakes even great people make.
  - orange8 7y ago
    I completely agree. That something is a linter, of which TypeScript is just one of the many options available. This whole idea of you cannot write a big app in JS is just peddled by those who do not understand, or hate JS. A good linter, proper programming practices, discipline will get you there. Anytime someone peddles a language or framework as a magic bullet to clean code, they're either selling you some snake oil or have drunk too much of some koolaid, imho.
    - giantDinosaur 7y ago
      This is the kind of attitude that has resulted in a million code vulnerabilities in C because the idea that it's inherently unsafe is just an idea 'peddled by people unskilled in its application' (to re-express nicely). It's the kind of attitude which will ignore the many inconsistencies in languages which were the result of historical accident instead of good design because it's just a blind acceptance of the way things turned out to be rather than what they _could_ be. Many who go on about 'discipline' are often creating error prone applications and, ironically, peddling 'discipline' as that very magic bullet to cure all ills. I don't know if I've even seen discipline defined beyond some self-referential 'avoid doing these bad things that our language/environment allows by knowing that they're bad before you make the mistakes that show you they're bad'. Do developers just shrug and accept it as a fundamental design constraint to good programming languages when their booleans add with their integers and concatenate with their strings and give essentially random results? Do they not wonder: is there a system, more fundamental than linting, which can solve many of these issues in a general case?

maps7 7y ago

I picked up Svelte recently and I am happy with it. There is good documentation and examples and any questions I had were already answered online. I haven't used Elm yet.

adelarsq 7y ago

Try F#. Has good tooling and its possible to use the ELM arch. See https://zaid-ajaj.github.io/the-elmish-book https://zaid-ajaj.github.io/the-elmish-book

xupybd 7y ago
Thank you this looks great. Okay now another tool to try. This is tricky business when you're looking for the tool set you want to invest in for the next 2 to 5 years and there are so many promising options.

saila 7y ago

I used Svelte 3 for a fairly complex side project last year (rewrote it from React), and it's my favorite JS framework so far. I do wish the TypeScript story was better though. I've also used Elm for another little side project, and it was super fun to learn, but it was a bit mind-bending at first. I think Svelte is a fairly safe choice because it's actively developed and because it's not too different from Angular/React/Vue. If there's any possibility that you'll have to hand this code over to someone else, I think Elm is a much less safe choice. So, to echo tomerbd's reply: Elm for fun; Svelte for profit.

wolfadex 7y ago
Just a reminder that Svelte, in Rich Harris's own words, is a language and not a framework. It technically isn't JavaScript, just an incredibly similar syntax.

wolfadex 7y ago

While I primarily use Elm for all my front end side projects, I do think it's worthwhile to try both. I'm currently writing a blog about trying as many front end frameworks/languages as I can. I'm going with this approach because I want to see what I can learn from each of them. For example, I've learned from Elm that compilers can be much friendlier. I've learned from Svelte that people are more willing to accept what appears to be familiar. You may learn something completely different.

hitekker 7y ago

Prezi, the original company that backed Elm, laid-off the maintainer and then deprecated Elm in their codebase.

rgoulter 7y ago
I wasn't aware of that context. Though evancz now works at NoRedInk. https://www.noredink.com/about/team https://www.noredink.com/about/team

michaelcampbell 7y ago

If you haven't yet, find and read the lengthy "why I'm leaving elm" post; there's a big discussion here also. May provide some impetus one way or the other for you.