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That "Why I'm Leaving Elm" post comes up on most Elm discussions, and I would implore anyone to give it a try for themselves before deciding against it. I've be

by antew 5y ago

That "Why I'm Leaving Elm" post comes up on most Elm discussions, and I would implore anyone to give it a try for themselves before deciding against it. I've been working in Elm professionally for a few years now and I think Luke's experience in that blog post is certainly atypical. For writing web applications Elm is an excellent language to work in, the compiler is friendly and fast, there are basically zero runtime exceptions, refactoring is a breeze, and it really shines on larger code bases. Web-components are discounted pretty quickly in that post, but they really fill an important gap where ports are awkward. In the years I've been using it I haven't run across a problem that I couldn't solve in a nice way. That is not to say my experience is universal, but the negative posts tend to garner a lot more attention than positive posts, and I'd feel bad if someone were to skip over what is an awesome project due to them!

dhucerbin 5y ago
> I think Luke's experience in that blog post is certainly atypical. > the negative posts tend to garner a lot more attention than positive posts On the other hand, my team was very unsatisfied with Elm and when we bring those issues to community we were quickly asked to leave. Of course it is fair but please note that negative opinions are discouraged and thus not common. We just disengaged from community and started elsewhere.
- antew 5y ago
  Sorry, I didn't mean to say that nobody has negative experiences with it, but that "X considered harmful" style posts tend to get more attention on sites than positive experiences generally do. What was something that left you unsatisfied with Elm? The biggest one for me until relatively recently was handling state updating state from leaf components, it was fairly cumbersome to have `(Model, Cmd, ExternalMsg)` in lots of places. At work we recently switched to the Effect pattern (https://sporto.github.io/elm-patterns/architecture/effects.html https://sporto.github.io/elm-patterns/architecture/effects.h...) which has alleviated a lot of the overhead.
  - dwohnitmok 5y ago
    FWIW the creator of the Effect pattern has some pretty deep reservations about Elm (http://reasonableapproximation.net/2019/10/20/the-effect-pattern.html#fn:dont-like-elm http://reasonableapproximation.net/2019/10/20/the-effect-pat...). His reservations end up being the same ones that get hashed out all the time over HN (JS interop and the development model).
leshow 5y ago
It's not just luke, here's a couple more, two of these I remember in particular the others are just from a google search https://reasonablypolymorphic.com/blog/elm-is-wrong/ https://reasonablypolymorphic.com/blog/elm-is-wrong/ https://dev.to/kspeakman/elm-019-broke-us--khn https://dev.to/kspeakman/elm-019-broke-us--khn https://blog.bitsrc.io/elm-and-why-its-not-quite-ready-yet-2c516a81e252 https://blog.bitsrc.io/elm-and-why-its-not-quite-ready-yet-2... https://medium.com/@cscalfani/the-biggest-problem-with-elm-4faecaa58b77 https://medium.com/@cscalfani/the-biggest-problem-with-elm-4... I've come to view Elm as someones personal compiler project. If you are good with the decisions made then you're going to have a fine time, otherwise you probably won't
- antew 5y ago
  I think we are somewhat in agreement, Elm is certainly Evan's language and framework, and if you live within the boundaries of it you'll have a pleasant experience. I have read all of the bad experience posts on Elm because I've spent a while working with it now and it is always valuable to see someone else's perspective on it. In practice the pain points either haven't really been a problem for me, or I've found a satisfactory way around them using web components, ports, code generation, or other ways. My experience is just more anec-data and I know it won't represent everyone's experience. I'd encourage anyone hesitant about Elm to give it a go, it's been a joy to work with.

by antew 5y ago

dhucerbin 5y ago

> I think Luke's experience in that blog post is certainly atypical. > the negative posts tend to garner a lot more attention than positive posts On the other hand, my team was very unsatisfied with Elm and when we bring those issues to community we were quickly asked to leave. Of course it is fair but please note that negative opinions are discouraged and thus not common. We just disengaged from community and started elsewhere.

antew 5y ago
Sorry, I didn't mean to say that nobody has negative experiences with it, but that "X considered harmful" style posts tend to get more attention on sites than positive experiences generally do. What was something that left you unsatisfied with Elm? The biggest one for me until relatively recently was handling state updating state from leaf components, it was fairly cumbersome to have `(Model, Cmd, ExternalMsg)` in lots of places. At work we recently switched to the Effect pattern (https://sporto.github.io/elm-patterns/architecture/effects.html https://sporto.github.io/elm-patterns/architecture/effects.h...) which has alleviated a lot of the overhead.
- dwohnitmok 5y ago
  FWIW the creator of the Effect pattern has some pretty deep reservations about Elm (http://reasonableapproximation.net/2019/10/20/the-effect-pattern.html#fn:dont-like-elm http://reasonableapproximation.net/2019/10/20/the-effect-pat...). His reservations end up being the same ones that get hashed out all the time over HN (JS interop and the development model).

leshow 5y ago

It's not just luke, here's a couple more, two of these I remember in particular the others are just from a google search https://reasonablypolymorphic.com/blog/elm-is-wrong/ https://reasonablypolymorphic.com/blog/elm-is-wrong/ https://dev.to/kspeakman/elm-019-broke-us--khn https://dev.to/kspeakman/elm-019-broke-us--khn https://blog.bitsrc.io/elm-and-why-its-not-quite-ready-yet-2c516a81e252 https://blog.bitsrc.io/elm-and-why-its-not-quite-ready-yet-2... https://medium.com/@cscalfani/the-biggest-problem-with-elm-4faecaa58b77 https://medium.com/@cscalfani/the-biggest-problem-with-elm-4... I've come to view Elm as someones personal compiler project. If you are good with the decisions made then you're going to have a fine time, otherwise you probably won't

antew 5y ago
I think we are somewhat in agreement, Elm is certainly Evan's language and framework, and if you live within the boundaries of it you'll have a pleasant experience. I have read all of the bad experience posts on Elm because I've spent a while working with it now and it is always valuable to see someone else's perspective on it. In practice the pain points either haven't really been a problem for me, or I've found a satisfactory way around them using web components, ports, code generation, or other ways. My experience is just more anec-data and I know it won't represent everyone's experience. I'd encourage anyone hesitant about Elm to give it a go, it's been a joy to work with.