| > your enthusiasm for Elm As I said, I'm not an Elm fanboy. I don't actually like it that much. > JS is an EXTREMELY flexible languange. Open and malleble to both experts and newbies alike. Open to all styles and paradgims of programming including object and functional Sure. So what? So is LISP. I'm talking about "business value", meaning: if you don't care about how shiny and flexible and open your programmers' languages are, you care about the hard $$$ cost of development and maintainence per unit of webapp functionality delivered, then Elm makes a heck of a lot more sense than JS+etc. The compiler and the fact that you get zero front-end errors just blows away the typical JS dev cycle with a buggy front-end. I can't quantify it because you can't quantify the hypothetical lost business due to hypothetical bugs that don't happen because you're not using JS. To me it seems clear that it is much cheaper to develop and maintain Elm apps. > what makes it possible to be the worlds most compiled to languange Nah. That's because it's the only language in the browser and people would rather use something else. > Elm, started in 2012 is even older than react, and would've took of long ago if it had any business value. You're begging the question I think, my whole puzzlement is that the business value seems very clear yet Elm hasn't taken off. To date, the only serious objection I've heard here and elsewhere is that they removed older docs when they bumped a minor version number. That sucks. |
It doesn't, sorry. JS resources, developers and libraries are atleast x1000 more than Elm. business is about supply and demand, more supply == cheaper cost. That's business 101. That's why there are hardly any Elm jobs advertised if compared to JS. You keep talking about how Elm makes better business sense, but the reality of it is completely different. Maybe all those employees are just making the wrong business decision, right? Wishful fanboy thinking. You are even in denial about liking Elm, which is pretty obvious to anyone reading your comments about it.
> Nah. That's because it's the only language in the browser and people would rather use something else.
Something else like dart, flash, VB, Java... oh wait! They've all been used in the browser before, none passed the test of time. And Elms approach (transpiling to JS, CSS, HTML) is not unique either, e.g. TypeScript and its not exactly shinning against competition in its league either. Once it beats competition there, then maybe it can start taking aim at JS, CSS and HTML.
> You're begging the question I think, my whole puzzlement is that the business value seems very clear yet Elm hasn't taken off.
It seems very clear to you, because you like and have invested in the language so much. A less invested "business person" will have a more objective view of which of the two (JS vs Elm) makes more business sense.