Just a few comments: > The one thing I'm not really sure I'm prepared to answer is how I can be sure that Elm isn't just another CoffeeScript or Dart, and in 2 or 3 years we'll have an impossible time hiring anyone > > who knows how to use it because everyone's going to go back to JavaScript.
Don't invest in any single technology or workflow - just invest in your own ability to adapt quickly to constant change. Front-end software for the web is essentially disposable - let's embrace this! If you get a couple of years of mileage out of your front end app before it you need re-write it from scratch using a completely new or different technology, you're doing great! My advice is just grab the best technology you can at the moment, milk it for all its worth, jump to something better when it comes along - and don't look back. The path my career took over the past 25 years was: Basic, Hypercard, Director/Lingo, Java, Flash/AS3, JavaScript, and now Elm. Nothing is forever in this industry, and most things are deliriously short lived. Just relax and enjoy the ride! :) ... However! Until Elm reaches v.1.0 (which could be years from now, nobody knows) every version bump, every six months or so, results in API breaking changes at the language level. Some of those changes, like from 0.16 to 0.17 have been huge and have required quite a painful upgrade. (For example It took me 7 hours to upgrade a 3000 LOC app, making over 200 changes. All of those 7 hours, except the last five minutes, was done blind just following the compiler's messages.) Are you prepared to invest in upgrading your entire Elm codebase with every version bump to keep it current? In that regard, although you can definitely use Elm in production, its still very much an experimental technology - and we are the lab rats. But, it says a lot for the dismal state front end web development even under these conditions Elm is way better than anything else out there! Regarding learning Elm: I'm a non-talented, slow learner who has to do everything about 10 times before it sinks in. And then I have to do it another 10 times just to make sure. It took me about 2 weeks of true beginner-level head-banging to get to grips with Elm, and another 2 weeks of tentative experimentation before I started being productive. But, the time I spent learning Elm has been paid back many times over by the time I've saved debugging my apps. Elm has unquestionably saved me **months** of debugging time. I've had experiences with Elm's compiler that have bordered on the supernatural - it's pointed me to bugs that would have taken me weeks of laborious mine-sweeping if I have had been using pure JS. And, the best part about learning Elm? It makes programming fun again! Regarding hiring: A search for companies hiring Elm programmers will turn up exactly 1: No Red Ink. There is no statistically significant demand for Elm programmers whatsoever. However, the smartest programmers in the world are all here on elm-discuss! Elm users self-select as top talent that you would never find in such high concentrations anywhere else. So, just post your job applications here and I'm sure you'll have dozens of high-quality applications. On Saturday, November 5, 2016 at 6:01:42 PM UTC-4, Zacqary Adam Xeper wrote: > > Hey Elmos, > > I've finally gotten an opportunity to pitch Elm to my fairly large dev > team. I feel like I'm prepared to make the case for it against a lot of > objections: i.e. how will we learn yet another programming language, do we > really need something that never throws exceptions, etc. etc. > > The one thing I'm not really sure I'm prepared to answer is how I can be > sure that Elm isn't just another CoffeeScript or Dart, and in 2 or 3 years > we'll have an impossible time hiring anyone who knows how to use it because > everyone's going to go back to JavaScript. > > How do I convince Elm skeptics that this thing is here to stay? I can do a > great job of incorporating a small bit of Elm code into our stack to show > how great it is, but they won't even let me merge it into prod unless I can > make the case for its longevity. > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Elm Discuss" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to elm-discuss+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
