Some highlights from this release are listed here[1].
The best part of Gleam in my opinion is the language's design. It's just so elegant to read and write. Take this example code snippet from the release notes:
It's a trivial code snippet, but I'm finding this kind of "first class" pattern matching produces very readable, elegant-looking, well organized code.
There was a discussion the other day about the pipe operator being added to PHP 8.x. Gleam was my first language which included a pipe operator. Now, having used it a bit, I feel every language should have something like it.
Interesting. I was just about to write the opposite. I tried Gleam to solve last year's Advent of Code, and it felt like a weird mix between Rust and Elixir. You can't write code as elegantly as you'd do in Elixir, which was somewhat disappointing. I switched back to Elixir after a couple of days. I think the biggest advantage of Gleam is static type system.
Depending when this was, it was likely pre-1.x days? Things moved very quickly there for a while - it's worth checking back in again.
Gleam seems to have a lot of obvious influences from Rust, and the creator is a rust dev.
While the Gleam ecosystem is vastly less mature than Elixir's or Rust's (because it's literally younger), the language itself, I've found, is vastly more pleasant to read/write. YMMV of course.
I prefer Elixir's syntax over Gleam's, but my main issue with Gleam is architectural. Specifically, Gleam had to bastardize BEAM and OTP to implement static typing. To me, static typing vs. dynamic typing is like having a shelf with a doily vs. one without a doily (the shelf works fine either way), so messing up a solid Actor Model implementation, for instance, for the sake of static typing seems like the wrong thing to do.
I'm so envious of this. In TypeScript I use ts-pattern and Effect Schema, and while they make this logic way nicer, it's insanely verbose and doesn't offer any of the niceties of being first class.
I have not used it at all, but Gleam does have a javascript target in it's compiler/build-tool. So in theory, you can write Gleam (strongly typed, etc) and produce js.
I've exclusively used the BEAM/Erlang target so far - but the js community within Gleam seems quite interesting.
No, it doesn't have strong if err != nil { return err; } vibes.
Pattern matching on Ok/Error is one of the best known error handling, while go error handling is one of the worst. They are about as far from each other as possible.
That's what Gleam's use expressions[1] are for (the last example is exactly this case). Most languages with the same heritage as Gleam have grown a similar syntactical feature, such as OCaml's binding operators or F#'s computation expressions. Although I appreciate how simple Gleam's is while having similar power.
This is a trivial snippet. Often you will transform/map your error into another type (or deal with it in some way), so it's not so much `if err != nil { return err; }` vibes like you're thinking here.
The beauty here is being compelled to handle both the happy and sad paths. You cannot just pretend the sad path doesn't exist.
I come from js/ts as well and I find snake case much more readable than camel after using it in other languages for a bit. There are even js/ts projects that use snake case despite the camel case convention, for readability
I come from a background where everything is camelCase. Naturally I wrote my JSON this way as well, among other things.
Switching to snake_case was challenging at first - I kept writing things in camelCase. Now, I've become pretty fond of snake_case and have a tough time going back into environments that require camelCase - funny thing, that is.
Thankfully Gleam's build tool/language server has a fairly strongly opinionated formatter built in, so it will let you know pretty quickly and help you fix it.
I really like gleam. I have a few unfinished side projects in gleam with about 10k lines of code, so I've had enough of a taste to know I like it. I can't wait to see how it matures. I plan to write more gleam in the future. I am particularly excited about the possibilities of sharing more code between webapp frontends and backends. Gleam has so much potential and is already quite productive.
I am not that online of a person. But I joined the discord to say hi and ask a few questions and I have to say the community really does have great vibes. If I were spending more time online, I would likely bias to spending it in the gleam community. They're a bunch of very friendly, and smart people working on a wide variety of interesting projects.
Gleam has a note regarding type-classes on their website[1]. The language itself seems to aim to remain simple - which is a pretty good thing in my opinion.
I don’t like it. Makes it feel like golang it’s like they want to keep it simple so they remove something fundamental. Golang says the same shit in their faq and there’s a whole slew of people who gave golang so much shit for it. Especially the fp community.
Golang for the longest time had no generics. Now it doesn’t have sum types.
When you try to build something truly complex like a compiler, you’ll see the abstractions start to screw up because can’t use interfaces in gleam.
> As a community, we want to be friendly too. People from around the world, of all backgrounds, genders, and experience levels are welcome and respected equally. See our community code of conduct for more. Black lives matter. Trans rights are human rights. No nazi bullsh*t.
On one hand I applaud that their community standards are inclusive, but on the other hand, it shouldn't be that blatantly ideological from the get go. It's just another programming language, not a political platform.
I used to be on the fence with this, finding the ideology-forward attitude fairly abrasive. I've since decided that while I don't love it, I see the perceived necessity of it that some people have. I enjoy the privilege of living somewhere and being a person who no one cares to cause problems for. Some people don't have that experience, and are targeted routinely and unfairly. I see it like they put up these barriers and deterrences because they need to, not just that they want to. People who support them participate in that endeavour because it matters enough.
For guys like me, it seems like a needless distraction from what matters. Unless I consider living a life in which there are people who don't want me to exist, or something. Then yeah, I might throw up a few "please fuck off" signs, I don't know.
I used to think it was kinda pander-y, but then after participating in some of these communities it was just obnoxious when it wasn't stated, the cultural wedge between people. Where randomly there was drama from someone posting an unrelated yet offensive meme/joke, then it was a huge discussion on if it was ban worthy, if it was okay to joke about, or xyz. When really I just wanted to be nerdy with others.
The Gleam community has been the best, most welcoming community I've ever seen on the internet. And I've been a around for a while. I attribute this in part to their clear stance.
I was welcomed too, and strongly encouraged to contribute. It was really nice. Though the signals might appear abrasive to some, it doesn't represent an abrasive group of people at all.
Trans people are over represented in compilers communities. You don’t get programming languages without the hard work of people in the trans community. In a world where they are constantly under attack, it’s important to make them feel safe and welcome. Trans people are welcome in our dev communities and that needs to be explicitly stated these days, because trans inclusion is not implied in our bigoted society.
Gleam is an incredible technical achievement and the community an amazing social one. You should be proud of both, thank you for your clear vision and commitment on this issue despite so much consistent external pushback.
I've never used Gleam and really don't care either way about the creator's politics, but it would be nice to see Gleam hit the HN front page for once without this same tedious conversation getting repeated every time.
Isn't there something more interesting we can talk about?
> Shouldn't be that blatantly ideological, it's not a political platform
Yeah! This always stands out like a sore thumb on the website. Like _yeah_, all of it should go without saying! You're a freely available programming language, of course everyone can use it! Of course everyone is welcome! Does a hammer care about your gender or race? No, anyone can use it! It's also very weird and a little childish to specifically include "no nazi bullshit". Isn't it obvious that "nazi bullshit" isn't welcome? Like a no-brainer? Why does a programming language feel the need to say this? Are prominent nazis actively showing interest in Gleam and trying to promote their "bullshit" with it?
Also, the phrase "nazi bullshit" is severely downplaying the problem with the nazis. "Bullshit" is usually something mildly inconvenient, somewhat unfair, kinda infuriating, but it usually doesn't threaten anybody and doesn't fuel world wars.
> Isn't it obvious that "nazi bullshit" isn't welcome? Like a no-brainer?
Unfortunately, not in this day and age.
> Why does a programming language feel the need to say this?
It's less about "the language saying it" and more about the standards of the community that surrounds the language.
For a language to thrive, it needs a community of people contributing to it. If it doesn't, it'll eventually die unused. As such, there's more than "just the language"; it is also a community-building effort.
> Also, the phrase "nazi bullshit" is severely...
IMHO, you're reading too much into the word "bullshit".
> It's just another programming language, not a political platform
Politics is baked into everything we do, like the lack of any political messaging is still a political message. With this approach, it weeds out those that don't align with the core community which is ideal for an organization that only thrives with volunteer involvement.
Of course it is. You can't be against anything without an idea, without it you wouldn't be opposed, you'd just not give a shit. Not caring isn't ideological just like not believing in god isn't, but being anti-god? That's pure ideology.
Readit News
The best part of Gleam in my opinion is the language's design. It's just so elegant to read and write. Take this example code snippet from the release notes:
It's a trivial code snippet, but I'm finding this kind of "first class" pattern matching produces very readable, elegant-looking, well organized code.There was a discussion the other day about the pipe operator being added to PHP 8.x. Gleam was my first language which included a pipe operator. Now, having used it a bit, I feel every language should have something like it.
The pipe skips so much boilerplate and clearly communicates intent. Absolutely love it.[1] https://gleam.run/news/no-more-dependency-management-headach...
Interesting. I was just about to write the opposite. I tried Gleam to solve last year's Advent of Code, and it felt like a weird mix between Rust and Elixir. You can't write code as elegantly as you'd do in Elixir, which was somewhat disappointing. I switched back to Elixir after a couple of days. I think the biggest advantage of Gleam is static type system.
The two languages are almost the same at the value level, so code should translate across well.
Gleam seems to have a lot of obvious influences from Rust, and the creator is a rust dev.
While the Gleam ecosystem is vastly less mature than Elixir's or Rust's (because it's literally younger), the language itself, I've found, is vastly more pleasant to read/write. YMMV of course.
I've exclusively used the BEAM/Erlang target so far - but the js community within Gleam seems quite interesting.
Pattern matching on Ok/Error is one of the best known error handling, while go error handling is one of the worst. They are about as far from each other as possible.
[1]: https://gleam.run/news/v0.25-introducing-use-expressions/
The beauty here is being compelled to handle both the happy and sad paths. You cannot just pretend the sad path doesn't exist.
Perhaps its because I deal in TypeScript all day, every day, but it never stuck with me.
That said, small price to pay for a very nice runtime!
https://github.com/sveltejs/svelte/issues/3479#issuecomment-...
Switching to snake_case was challenging at first - I kept writing things in camelCase. Now, I've become pretty fond of snake_case and have a tough time going back into environments that require camelCase - funny thing, that is.
Thankfully Gleam's build tool/language server has a fairly strongly opinionated formatter built in, so it will let you know pretty quickly and help you fix it.
I am not that online of a person. But I joined the discord to say hi and ask a few questions and I have to say the community really does have great vibes. If I were spending more time online, I would likely bias to spending it in the gleam community. They're a bunch of very friendly, and smart people working on a wide variety of interesting projects.
https://youtu.be/vyEWc0-kbkw
[1] https://gleam.run/frequently-asked-questions/#will-gleam-hav...
Golang for the longest time had no generics. Now it doesn’t have sum types.
When you try to build something truly complex like a compiler, you’ll see the abstractions start to screw up because can’t use interfaces in gleam.
> As a community, we want to be friendly too. People from around the world, of all backgrounds, genders, and experience levels are welcome and respected equally. See our community code of conduct for more. Black lives matter. Trans rights are human rights. No nazi bullsh*t.
On one hand I applaud that their community standards are inclusive, but on the other hand, it shouldn't be that blatantly ideological from the get go. It's just another programming language, not a political platform.
For guys like me, it seems like a needless distraction from what matters. Unless I consider living a life in which there are people who don't want me to exist, or something. Then yeah, I might throw up a few "please fuck off" signs, I don't know.
Don't make in groups and out groups. Just have a "be nice" rule and leave it at that.
It's first and foremost a community, and it's important for communities to have clear a code of conduct and moderation of that code.
There are lots of languages without community, Gleam is not one of those.
Isn't there something more interesting we can talk about?
Yeah! This always stands out like a sore thumb on the website. Like _yeah_, all of it should go without saying! You're a freely available programming language, of course everyone can use it! Of course everyone is welcome! Does a hammer care about your gender or race? No, anyone can use it! It's also very weird and a little childish to specifically include "no nazi bullshit". Isn't it obvious that "nazi bullshit" isn't welcome? Like a no-brainer? Why does a programming language feel the need to say this? Are prominent nazis actively showing interest in Gleam and trying to promote their "bullshit" with it?
Also, the phrase "nazi bullshit" is severely downplaying the problem with the nazis. "Bullshit" is usually something mildly inconvenient, somewhat unfair, kinda infuriating, but it usually doesn't threaten anybody and doesn't fuel world wars.
Unfortunately, not in this day and age.
> Why does a programming language feel the need to say this?
It's less about "the language saying it" and more about the standards of the community that surrounds the language.
For a language to thrive, it needs a community of people contributing to it. If it doesn't, it'll eventually die unused. As such, there's more than "just the language"; it is also a community-building effort.
> Also, the phrase "nazi bullshit" is severely...
IMHO, you're reading too much into the word "bullshit".
Dead Comment
Politics is baked into everything we do, like the lack of any political messaging is still a political message. With this approach, it weeds out those that don't align with the core community which is ideal for an organization that only thrives with volunteer involvement.