Exploring Gleam, a type-safe language on the BEAM!
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Exploring Gleam, a type-safe language on the BEAM!
https://christopher.engineering/en/blog/gleam-overview/
From Erlang, to Elixir and now, GLEAM!?
https://christopher.engineering/en/blog/gleam-overview/
From Erlang, to Elixir and now, GLEAM!?
I mean that's pretty neat, but I'm reminded of that time a MongoDB user found an SQL-based database and wrote a lengthy article about all of the revolutionary features. Feels the same every time a Javascript dev discovers a programming language with actual typing.
Seems cool, but also.. normal? That's how languages should all work?
That's how languages should all work?
While I agree, should be is not is. Also, Javascript is still a widely used and favored language, despite it's flaws.
Sometimes people need to be convinced that there's something better, hence all the articles of "Javascript devs discovering actual typing", as you mentioned. Although it seems like the author already knew there's better (I see Typescript and Rust on their Github), that they were just sharing Gleam.
As for specifically Gleam, I will say it's a very nice language. Very simple to understand (with one minor exception: I personally find the use keyword is a bit odd), strong typing, no collections of mysterious symbols (cough, Haskell), no metaprogramming, no lifetimes, no borrowing, no unclear polymorphism, no pointers, no nonsense. I like it, and am excited to see it grow
BEAM is the VM that Erlang runs on. It also supports Elixir and some other lesser known languages
Gleam is cool. I wrote some services with it to see if I wanted to use it for more projects. It seemed like a good option because it would be easy to teach.
Things I like:
Things I don't like:
"Hello, " <> name. It starts to get cumbersomeserdeif guardsSounds cool. The types like Haskell's data types or Rust's enums compared with proper pattern matching are pretty much a requirement for a good language imo. And the process/message passing is interesting.