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I've built several personal projects that I'm not really ready to share widely: An AI tourguide which presents the nearest geotagged Wikipedia pages to the use

I've built several personal projects that I'm not really ready to share widely: An AI tourguide which presents the nearest geotagged Wikipedia pages to the user's location and then produces an entertaining summary of your chosen topic on request. It's just a simple mashup of Wikipedia, MaxBox and OpenAI APIs. A "leaving the house" dashboard for my wife. It's displayed on a tablet near her mirror, and shows weather and live public transport information to reduce the "I missed the bus and I didn't realize it's raining" disasters that get her day off to a bad start. I've had a lot of fun making these with Gleam. It has the "if it compiles, it usually works" factor that people love about Rust, with none of the complicated borrow-checking rules. It's very simple - once you're up and running, there's not a lot more to learn about the language and you can just focus on modelling your problem.

actionfromafar 2y ago
Gleam vs Elixir? Go!
- hoppp 2y ago
  I love elixir but gleam looks more easy to learn if you come from javascript
  - AlchemistCamp 2y ago
    It depends a lot on the way you write JavaScript. If you work with React, like FP and make everything you can immutable, you’ll probably find it easy. If you write JavaScript like it’s Java and really lean into OO, then Elixir will be more alien and force you to learn some new patterns.
    - lawn 2y ago
      I don't really see why this is the case. Both Elixir and Gleam are functional languages with immutable data. The only major difference between them is the typing and the syntax I'd say.
      - AlchemistCamp 2y ago
        Being typed would make it harder, not easier for a JS dev. Syntax is a very surface-level difference and is basically a rounding error in cases like this after the very initial stages. If I were to try to make the argument for you, I'd point to some of Elixir's more powerful abstractions like protocols and macros as a reason Elixir might be harder for JS devs. In reality, though, I found it very straightforward to learn as a JS dev, and that was back in 2016 when the documentation was much worse.
- satvikpendem 2y ago
  Static types is all the reason I need to use Gleam over Elixir.
  - Fire-Dragon-DoL 2y ago
    I tried Gleam for advent of code. Love the types, but the standard library needs desperately something along "lazy sequences" (elixir streams) and every os call should support that. It was too hard to figure out through unmaintained packages

actionfromafar 2y ago

Gleam vs Elixir? Go!

hoppp 2y ago
I love elixir but gleam looks more easy to learn if you come from javascript
- AlchemistCamp 2y ago
  It depends a lot on the way you write JavaScript. If you work with React, like FP and make everything you can immutable, you’ll probably find it easy. If you write JavaScript like it’s Java and really lean into OO, then Elixir will be more alien and force you to learn some new patterns.
  - lawn 2y ago
    I don't really see why this is the case. Both Elixir and Gleam are functional languages with immutable data. The only major difference between them is the typing and the syntax I'd say.
    - AlchemistCamp 2y ago
      Being typed would make it harder, not easier for a JS dev. Syntax is a very surface-level difference and is basically a rounding error in cases like this after the very initial stages. If I were to try to make the argument for you, I'd point to some of Elixir's more powerful abstractions like protocols and macros as a reason Elixir might be harder for JS devs. In reality, though, I found it very straightforward to learn as a JS dev, and that was back in 2016 when the documentation was much worse.
satvikpendem 2y ago
Static types is all the reason I need to use Gleam over Elixir.
- Fire-Dragon-DoL 2y ago
  I tried Gleam for advent of code. Love the types, but the standard library needs desperately something along "lazy sequences" (elixir streams) and every os call should support that. It was too hard to figure out through unmaintained packages