package.elm-lang.org VS Elm

Also the fact that their package manager is strongly coupled against https://package.elm-lang.org/. There is no way to override it. This means that if that package site ever goes down, you will be left with an unbuildable project. Seems pretty risky to me.

Imagine, for example, you have a component library that you don't want to publish to the public package.elm-lang.org. How do you make that available just within your company?

Not to be silly but I was getting ready to do my port & all but clicking on "source" from with package.elm-lang.org takes me to elm-charts, not elm-plot.

Elm has packages prefaced with the repo owner, so its mdgriffith/elm-ui and not just "elm-ui".

If you're dealing with some kind of currency it's better to use a Decimal type which has few packages on the ecosystem.

If you are looking for a complete API documentation you should be browsing https://package.elm-lang.org/ ; I still find it lacking compared to other programming languages, but it's definitely more complete that the starting guide.

There are two ways of structuring state. Record with each page's state in its own field OR a custom type with the variants containing the state for the page (this is what you see in elm-spa-example or package.elm-lang.org). The tabs you describe behave like the first approach.

Elm is a strongly typed functional language, compiler, package manager, and framework. You write in the Elm language, and it compiles to JavaScript for use in the browser. The Elm compiler has 2 basic modes of development, and production. It optionally has a REPL if you want to test some basic code. The package manager uses it’s own website and structure using elm.json, instead of package.json. The framework is what Elm is most known for, and was the inspiration for Redux.

I was considering doing just that, using nginx server. I was using Evan's git repo for Elm packages (website: https://package.elm-lang.org/) (git: https://github.com/elm/package.elm-lang.org ) where he does uses that. So I think I will try this first and then consider deploying the binary if I can. Thanks for the advice!

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/