Evan Czaplicki - Let's be mainstream! User focused design in Elm - Curry On
Why Hacker News recommends it
Recommended as the clearest explanation of Elm's design thinking and of making functional languages mainstream, plus a popular monad explanation clip.
What it is
Evan Czaplicki, creator of Elm, talks at Curry On 2015 about user-focused language design. He explains the principles behind Elm and how to make a functional, typed language as approachable as JavaScript.
Recommended by 7 HN commenters across 6 different months, 2015 to 2023.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec thinkpad20 · 2016-01 · on “New Adventures for Elm”
> Elm is cute and interesting, but it's type system is less expressive than other languages and lacks features that I consider essential. I'd recommend watching this talk: [0]. Evan talks a lot about the decisions that went into the language, such as not having type classes or other advanced features. He makes a strong case for Elm not as a language-to-rule-them-all, but as a tool for the average programmer, who is more interested in building things than in learning about theory. The myriad language features in Haskell, OCaml, etc. are wonderful to those who understand them, but have not proven to be particularly effective at attracting those who aren't already interested in the languages. I
Recommends abglassman · 2015-11 · on “A sliding puzzle, built with Elm”
I'm pretty keen to play with Elm, but it gives me some pause that an app like this (or the demo at [LINK] ) results in... 11k lines of Javascript. Nevertheless, these talks got me bulled up on Elm: [LINK] (Richard Feldman, collegially, on React -> Elm)</a> / [this video] (Evan Czaplicki on the motivation for Elm)
Recommends brodo · 2015-11 · on “Making Elm faster and friendlier in 0.16”
Evan has described a lot of the thinking behind his decisions in this talk: [this video] The <~ for Signal.map is a good example for a "clever" thing which makes languages hard to read for newbies. It looks like it's part of the syntax and not a function. It's not hard to understand, but it's another thing to learn. I am very happy that things are removed from Elm (or not added in the first place, like type classes) because design is not finished when there is nothing more to add but when there is nothing more to remove.
Recommends intellectable · 2016-07 · on “Functional Programming Jargon”
I like how mpj explains it. Monad - FunFunFunction #21 [LINK] Furthermore, the creator of Elm has a fun explanation too. Evan Czaplicki - Let's be mainstream! User focused design in Elm - Curry On [this video] More serious computer scientist explains monads in the following. Erik Meijer: Functional Programming [LINK] and here too [LINK]
Recommends a-saleh · 2016-08 · on “Ask HN: Any great talks you would like to share?”
Lets be mainstream by Evan Czaplicky Designer of Elm language talks about principles he used to create language as approachable as JavaScript but as type-safe as haskell. [this video]
Recommends tcard · 2017-08 · on “The Problem with F# Evangelism”
A great take on this topic is a talk by Evan Czaplicki, creator of Elm, another functional language: Let's be mainstream! [1] The conclusions are more or less the same than the article, but Evan goes into a lot more depth. And in my opinion, as a result, Elm does very good in this regard. [1] [this video]
Recommends redbar0n · 2022-01 · on “Features of a dream programming language”
Elm creator Evan Czaplicki can, in an elegant and pedagogical way that would feel familiar to at least developers coming from JS: [this video] from 24:14 until 29:39. Haskell/FP/Math purists would probably balk at the oversimplification. But introducing intimidating concepts by way of such oversimplification (without entirely missing the target) is precisely the point! Beginners just need a very rough and coarse grained overview, so they are able to gain some basic familiarity with the concept. That gives them some already-familiar conceptual knobs to hang further details on, reduces fear, and inspires curiosity to investigate further.
Cites lk145 · 2015-07 · on “Democratized management could become a major recruiting advantage”
Yeah the Haskell part is mostly tongue and cheek :P I wouldn't use it for any old project but I could see how the benefits of Haskell could outweigh its difficulties in some scenarios. Personally, I like functional programming, but I'm not sure it's suitable for the masses (perhaps some day? [this video] ).