atomic VS Elm

I wanted ClojureScript, without transpilation, in the browser so badly I implemented much of it in plain JS. But JS still lacks first-class protocols (although there is a T39 proposal for them) so I have to implement protocols first. And I can tell you from having implemented much of Clojure myself in plain JS that it's protocols all the way down. 80% of my library are types and their protocols.

I've watched a lot of talks, but it was Rich Hickey's which most captivated me and, ultimately, inspired big change in how I coded. After discovering Clojure I was so desiring FP (i.e. ClojureScript) in the browser without a build step and hoard of dependencies that I wrote my own library.

I fell in love with Clojure and ported most of the tools to plain ol' JavaScript. I stole reactives and FRP from Elm. I write a functional core then wrap it with an imperative shell. It's been my mainstay for 10 years now.

What I did was looked past the languages at the ideas and saw they could be applied everywhere, including JavaScript. Take a look at my example programs (via prior link) and you can see Clojure applied to the JavaScript/browser realm.

I have found that the amount of code needed to support any page/app need not be massive. I have implemented modern board games with 250-300KB of js and the core lib I use on all my projects maxes out around 250KB, unminified. The lib itself is built on the premise of build avoidance.

I do JavaScript most of the time, but I was so inspired that I ported the Clojure mindset into the web development world so I could use it even in the absence of Clojure. I know there's ClojureScript, but I wanted the goodness without transpilation.

So I don't even do Clojure per se. I do Clojure in JavaScript without ClojureScript.

I use functional core, imperative shell. It would have you write a core which is a pure simulation. Write everything in the core using immutable data and pure functions. I elaborate on that here, along with examples.

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/