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It's incredible that on just about every piece I've ever read about Elm since they made that decision, this has been the first, second, and third comment. Wanti

It's incredible that on just about every piece I've ever read about Elm since they made that decision, this has been the first, second, and third comment. Wanting to try Elm for myself, I disregarded this advice, and.... immediately ran into the exact same problem! I've never seen such a promising project so conclusively killed by pure developer pigheadedness. And, amazingly, they've never backed down at all. They don't seem to mind that they maimed themselves.

pavlov 3y ago
A purity pledge is very typical of cults. It's both a filter and an enforcement mechanism. This may not apply to Elm. But I imagine it can feel easier and more rewarding to manage a community that's more like a cult than a typical free-for-all open source project.
- truculent 3y ago
  I think it’s probably harder and less rewarding to manage a community where you’re constantly taking flak for a technical decision people don’t like (and which those people generally don’t engage with the pros and cons of said decision!)
savanaly 3y ago
Out of curiosity, what did you try to do that you hit that issue right away? I've been writing Elm apps as side projects for years, and never even come close to the kernel thing being a problem. My apps are mostly graphically undemanding games and helper tools. What are the types of applications where this becomes an issue right away?
- matsemann 3y ago
  Most likely they didn't understand Ports and immediately wanted to reach for kernel stuff.
  - ghusbands 3y ago
    It's odd and rude to declare someone incompetent from so little information. Especially when the same problem is widely reported by other developers.
- lolc 3y ago
  In my case, it was a regex supplied by the user. Elm 0.18 had no support for constructing a regex at run-time. So I made a package that wraps native RegExp. When 0.19 was released, I couldn't upgrade because of those 5 lines. The regex package eventually got regex.fromstring(). So I could've upgraded. But at the time I was bumping against limits accessing Intl and I really hated the prospect of begging some maintainer for access to a browser api. Elm was the most fun I ever had developing a browser app. Then they decided I shouldn't be allowed to develop a ShootMyFoot module, and it stopped being fun overnight.
  - savanaly 3y ago
    Yeah, I really feel this a good way to divide developers into two types. There are those like me, to whom the philosophy of discourage foot guns systematically sounds kind of brilliant. To put it in flattering terms, it's pay a short term cost for the long term and hard-to-perceive but very real benefits (making certain categories of errors completely extinct). To put the other side in flattering terms: they're not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good, and never compromising on their vision because the tech is holding them back. I think the latter is definitely dominant in the discipline. I'm glad that at least Elm carries the torch for the former though.
    - lolc 3y ago
      The Elm people themselves worked with the impure browser api all the time. They just don't want me to do it. So it's not even a foolish consistency but just base gatekeeping. Turns me right off. If you want to divide into two camps how 0.19 was received I'd say it's people who were maintaining a substantial Elm project on the one side and people who weren't on the other. Maybe if you're carrying a torch don't drop it on the ecosystem.
  - fulafel 3y ago
    As a Elm non-user, naive question: would it be possible to use the JS interop (ports) for this, at cost of some clunkiness?
    - 3y ago

pavlov 3y ago

A purity pledge is very typical of cults. It's both a filter and an enforcement mechanism. This may not apply to Elm. But I imagine it can feel easier and more rewarding to manage a community that's more like a cult than a typical free-for-all open source project.

truculent 3y ago
I think it’s probably harder and less rewarding to manage a community where you’re constantly taking flak for a technical decision people don’t like (and which those people generally don’t engage with the pros and cons of said decision!)

savanaly 3y ago

Out of curiosity, what did you try to do that you hit that issue right away? I've been writing Elm apps as side projects for years, and never even come close to the kernel thing being a problem. My apps are mostly graphically undemanding games and helper tools. What are the types of applications where this becomes an issue right away?

matsemann 3y ago
Most likely they didn't understand Ports and immediately wanted to reach for kernel stuff.
- ghusbands 3y ago
  It's odd and rude to declare someone incompetent from so little information. Especially when the same problem is widely reported by other developers.
lolc 3y ago
In my case, it was a regex supplied by the user. Elm 0.18 had no support for constructing a regex at run-time. So I made a package that wraps native RegExp. When 0.19 was released, I couldn't upgrade because of those 5 lines. The regex package eventually got regex.fromstring(). So I could've upgraded. But at the time I was bumping against limits accessing Intl and I really hated the prospect of begging some maintainer for access to a browser api. Elm was the most fun I ever had developing a browser app. Then they decided I shouldn't be allowed to develop a ShootMyFoot module, and it stopped being fun overnight.
- savanaly 3y ago
  Yeah, I really feel this a good way to divide developers into two types. There are those like me, to whom the philosophy of discourage foot guns systematically sounds kind of brilliant. To put it in flattering terms, it's pay a short term cost for the long term and hard-to-perceive but very real benefits (making certain categories of errors completely extinct). To put the other side in flattering terms: they're not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good, and never compromising on their vision because the tech is holding them back. I think the latter is definitely dominant in the discipline. I'm glad that at least Elm carries the torch for the former though.
  - lolc 3y ago
    The Elm people themselves worked with the impure browser api all the time. They just don't want me to do it. So it's not even a foolish consistency but just base gatekeeping. Turns me right off. If you want to divide into two camps how 0.19 was received I'd say it's people who were maintaining a substantial Elm project on the one side and people who weren't on the other. Maybe if you're carrying a torch don't drop it on the ecosystem.
- fulafel 3y ago
  As a Elm non-user, naive question: would it be possible to use the JS interop (ports) for this, at cost of some clunkiness?
  - 3y ago