[earth_walker]

Elm's strengths are its constraints, which allow for simple, readable code that's easy to test and reason about - partly because libraries are also guaranteed to work within those constraints.

I've tried and failed several times to write Haskell in an Elm style, even though the syntax is so similar. It's probably me (it's definitely me!), but I've found that as soon as you depend on a library or two outside of prelude their complexities bleed into your project and eventually force you into peppering that readable, simple code with lifts, lenses, transformations and hidden magic.

Not to mention the error messages and compile times make developing in Haskell a chore in comparison.

p.s. Elm has not been abandoned, it's very active and getting better every day. You just can't measure by updates to the (stable, but with a few old bugs) core. For a small, unpopular language there is so much work going into high quality libraries and development tools. Check out

https://elmcraft.org/lore/elm-core-development

for a discussion.

Elm is so nice to work in. Great error messages, and near instant compile times, and a great ecosystem of static analysis, scaffolding, scripting, and hot reloading tools make the live development cycle super nice - it actually feels like what the lispers always promised would happen if we embraced repl-driven development.

[bbkane]

Thanks for the Elmcraft FAQ link. It's a great succinct explanation from the Elm leadership perspective (though tellingly not from the Elm leadership).

I feel like I understand that perspective, but I also don't think I'm wrong in claiming Elm has been effectively abandoned in a world where an FAQ like that needs to be written.

I'm not going to try to convince you though, enjoy Elm!!