bad_actor_poc VS Elm

I'm not suggesting people in this thread are wrong, but working for a security company gives a slightly different perspective. For example, there's really nothing stopping a rogue crate from exporting your private keys, just by using VS code. I wasn't thinking about this when I helped write that proposal, though.

Having less tools that can do things like https://github.com/lucky/bad_actor_poc is a relief.

Code execution that may not be so obvious could be the preLaunchTask that runs before starting the app and can run a build that has an extra task executing arbitrary code unrelated to the build. What about the npm module that steals your crypto wallet private keys? Make a simple edit and a malicious linter is loaded from the node_modules folder, instead of the one that is installed globally. Even reading the code can be deceptive, attackers can use Unicode hacks to hide malicious code in plain sight. Heck, you don't even have to open any source code to be owned.

https://github.com/lucky/bad_actor_poc is one example

It turns out that because Rust can execute code at compile time, simply opening a Rust source file in an editor with code completion support can cause a virus to be installed on my computer. Apparently I can't trust anything but basic text editors anymore...

Elm [1] is based on a similar idea. Build your app from pure functions that return HTML tags.

[1] https://elm-lang.org/

You also wouldn't really be creating your own new programing language. You would be creating something that can run JavaScript by following JavaScript standards and syntax. You might be able to add some non-standard features of your own on top of those standards, or include your own standard library of helpers or utilities, but you can't completely make a new or alternative language and then load it in the browser (or at least not by reimplementing ECMAScript standards... you actually can make your own language that runs within any Javascript enviroment, if you provide an interpreter or compiler that transforms it into valid JS. Some people have done something like this, eg Elm: https://elm-lang.org/).

You should at least have a look at https://elm-lang.org/ it is a pure functional language like Haskell (although with fewer fancy syntax/type classes) but it has some lovely libraries for visualisation and even with plain elm (+ elm-ui) doing string transformations can be easily done.

I get it. However, the whole point of using Unions to narrow your types, ensure only a set of possible scenarios can occur, and only access data of a particular union when it’s safe to do so. That’s some of what pattern matching can provide, and 100% of what using switch statements in TypeScript with their Discriminated Unions can provide. Yes, it’s not 100% exhaustive, but TypeScript is not soundly typed, and even Elm which is still has the same issue TypeScript does: You’re running in JavaScript where anything is possible. So it’s good enough to build with and much better than what you had.

The beauty of a language like Elm (and other lambda-calculus / functional programming inspired languages) is that there's very little transformation involved in going from an idea to code. And that seems to have a big impact on getting things done.

I think the most fun and approachable way for beginners to build games with functional programming is with Elm [1].

See a few (small, demo) games built by the community in [2] .

Notice Elm has abandoned the FRP approach in favor of Model-View-Update [3].

[1] https://elm-lang.org/