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Discussion on: Javascript's Persistent Popularity: No one seems to particularly enjoy the language, but everyone is using it

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justgage profile image
Gage

Oh man you should try Elm if you have a Haskell backed. Typescript might be nice for the stuff that's not supported in Elm yet though. The type system makes a world of difference, it's crazy.

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jvanbruegge profile image
Jan van Brügge

Elm is not a good language. You are at the mercy of it's creators because they decide how your code should work. Elm is simply not a general purpose language.
I want to try Purescript one day though. I looks like Haskell for the Browser

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justgage profile image
Gage

Elm only runs in the browser and is only really made for front end development. However just replacing most of your JavaScript is still very useful to me. I feel that it's restrictions are mostly caused by it's purity. It can't actually do any side effects so it has to have many pure logic functions that the runtime calls. All language creators decide how your code should work.

At it's current state it can't save you 100% from JavaScript but it can do about 95% (for the typical web app). If I can say that 95% of my code is beautiful and runtime error free I feel like that's a pretty awesome deal.

PureScript could be a good option if you already know Haskell. You do miss out on the enforced SemVer and perhaps more developed libraries but those are probably just a matter of time. It might be a better fit for you.

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jvanbruegge profile image
Jan van Brügge

What I mean is that Elm is too limiting. You are forced to TEA, which is a lot of boilerplate and you cannot try your own ideas