Gleam seems like a really cool language! I really like the design of Elixir, but I would love something statically typed. Something with first-class concurrency like Go, without the corner cases, and with functional programming creature comforts like ADTs to allow for composable error handling. The BEAM seems to me like the most mature platform for concurrent & distributed programs, and being ML-like gives you much of the rest “for free”. Perhaps I’m misunderstanding what Gleam is at present, but I think the language has a lot of promise.
That being said, I’m not entirely sure what the roadmap is. I’ve looked through the website a couple times, and noticed the docs were somewhat incomplete and there weren’t yet a lot of facilities for creating & using generic types.
Is assistance with evolving the language design welcome? Alternatively, is there a roadmap somewhere to guide a prospective contributor to high-priority issues or good first issues?
Perhaps I’m misunderstanding what Gleam is at present, but I think the language has a lot of promise.
Yes, I think you have an idea of the goals :)
That being said, I’m not entirely sure what the roadmap is.
The planned additions can be found in the issue tracker. We’re low on time so there’s not lots of detail in the tickets (most the discussion happens in Discord) but if anything catches your eye I’m happy to add extra info to specific tickets.
Tickets that are good to start with have been labelled as such, and more will be added in future.
Is assistance with evolving the language design welcome?
Drop by the Discord and get involved! That said the language has matured somewhat and there’s not going to be any large changes in future.
I’m “excited from afar” about Gleam, and it seems like maybe it’s mature enough for me to begin exploring. I haven’t used a BEAM language–besides networked services, what other use cases is Gleam a good fit for? I don’t think I’ve seen many CLI tools implemented in a BEAM language, for example. Even within the context of networked services, does just using Gleam pretty much get me all of the supervisor tree / reliability goodness that I hear about with Erlang, or do I need to opt into some framework? And if I use Gleam, will I effectively have to learn Erlang and/or Elixir? How much interop is there in the ecosystem, and how much is the user exposed to it?
I haven’t used a BEAM language–besides networked services, what other use cases is Gleam a good fit for? I don’t think I’ve seen many CLI tools implemented in a BEAM language, for example.
It’s a general purpose programming language with a virtual machine and a garbage collector, so all sorts really. I use it mostly for web services and little CLI tools that I use personally. I also have some frontend SPAs and widgets written in Gleam compiled to JavaScript.
If I were to make CLI tools that I wanted to ship to users I would probably compile the Gleam to JavaScript and bundle it into one file. It’s a bit easier to distribute it like that then to ask people to install the Erlang virtual machine.
Even within the context of networked services, does just using Gleam pretty much get me all of the supervisor tree / reliability goodness that I hear about with Erlang, or do I need to opt into some framework?
The Erlang framework that offers these properties is called OTP and you can use it from Gleam like any other BEAM language. We’ve got our own version called gleam_otp which is statically typed.
Most the time when writing web applications and such you can largely ignore it and the web server, database client, etc will all be written using the framework, giving you those properties.
And if I use Gleam, will I effectively have to learn Erlang and/or Elixir? How much interop is there in the ecosystem, and how much is the user exposed to it?
You don’t have to, but if you’re looking to use libraries we don’t have binding for it’ll help to learn some Erlang. Some Gleam users have never written any Erlang, others do a lot of it as they bring new APIs to Gleam. It largely depends on what you’re looking to do currently while the ecosystem is younger.
This is great news. Really excited that it sounds like a lot of the networked services ecosystem leverages OTP already (rather than it being more niche). Personally, I’d prefer to have self-contained binaries for CLI tools, but that’s not much of a big deal–I can probably use Go or similar if that’s really important to me. I’ll play around with it soon. 👍
I really wish the only community options weren’t Discord and GitHub – not even an unofficial Matrix.org room or IRC channel mention (seems IRC used to be supported). I was looking into the language recently as something with types on BEAM, but I felt like there was no option to ask questions toward the community if I had them so I didn’t feel it was worthwhile to read any further.
We did used to use IRC and we looked into Matrix but both lacked the anti-harassment and anti-abuse features that we need to run a community. Community is very important to Gleam so we need to ensure that we can deal with trolls and bigots should they arise.
As a nice unexpected bonus the active community exploded in size once we switched from IRC, it seemed it was a barrier to entry for many people.
Is there a downside for listing unofficial options for people to join at their own risk if they don’t feel comfortable giving their private data to Discord?
It’s tricky. So far the experience with unofficial projects (not unofficial community forums, afaik there are none) is that people still come to the Gleam core team when they want help with them or have a problem to report. It ends up creating additional work for us and we have quite limited time due not having corporate backing.
It would be good to list unofficial forums but we probably need to think carefully about the messaging and expectations around them.
I can understand it from an administrative and marketing standpoint; it’s just a shame that we, society, can’t seem to have the option that protects privacy and also attracts the masses (who are not aware of the privacy threats, or see the convenience as a worthwhile tradeoff). Instead, someone such as myself feels put off and I can’t help be echo the schism it creates noted by the Drew Devault in Please don’t use Discord for FOSS projects . It’s the reason I suggest at a minimum listing unofficial bastions as a compromise.
As someone who works on community and chat systems I would love to hear which anti-harassment and anti-abuse features are most important to a community like yours.
Gleam seems like a really cool language! I really like the design of Elixir, but I would love something statically typed. Something with first-class concurrency like Go, without the corner cases, and with functional programming creature comforts like ADTs to allow for composable error handling. The BEAM seems to me like the most mature platform for concurrent & distributed programs, and being ML-like gives you much of the rest “for free”. Perhaps I’m misunderstanding what Gleam is at present, but I think the language has a lot of promise.
That being said, I’m not entirely sure what the roadmap is. I’ve looked through the website a couple times, and noticed the docs were somewhat incomplete and there weren’t yet a lot of facilities for creating & using generic types.
Is assistance with evolving the language design welcome? Alternatively, is there a roadmap somewhere to guide a prospective contributor to high-priority issues or good first issues?
Hello! Thanks for the support!
Yes, I think you have an idea of the goals :)
The planned additions can be found in the issue tracker. We’re low on time so there’s not lots of detail in the tickets (most the discussion happens in Discord) but if anything catches your eye I’m happy to add extra info to specific tickets.
Tickets that are good to start with have been labelled as such, and more will be added in future.
Drop by the Discord and get involved! That said the language has matured somewhat and there’s not going to be any large changes in future.
I’m “excited from afar” about Gleam, and it seems like maybe it’s mature enough for me to begin exploring. I haven’t used a BEAM language–besides networked services, what other use cases is Gleam a good fit for? I don’t think I’ve seen many CLI tools implemented in a BEAM language, for example. Even within the context of networked services, does just using Gleam pretty much get me all of the supervisor tree / reliability goodness that I hear about with Erlang, or do I need to opt into some framework? And if I use Gleam, will I effectively have to learn Erlang and/or Elixir? How much interop is there in the ecosystem, and how much is the user exposed to it?
It’s a general purpose programming language with a virtual machine and a garbage collector, so all sorts really. I use it mostly for web services and little CLI tools that I use personally. I also have some frontend SPAs and widgets written in Gleam compiled to JavaScript.
If I were to make CLI tools that I wanted to ship to users I would probably compile the Gleam to JavaScript and bundle it into one file. It’s a bit easier to distribute it like that then to ask people to install the Erlang virtual machine.
The Erlang framework that offers these properties is called OTP and you can use it from Gleam like any other BEAM language. We’ve got our own version called gleam_otp which is statically typed.
Most the time when writing web applications and such you can largely ignore it and the web server, database client, etc will all be written using the framework, giving you those properties.
You don’t have to, but if you’re looking to use libraries we don’t have binding for it’ll help to learn some Erlang. Some Gleam users have never written any Erlang, others do a lot of it as they bring new APIs to Gleam. It largely depends on what you’re looking to do currently while the ecosystem is younger.
This is great news. Really excited that it sounds like a lot of the networked services ecosystem leverages OTP already (rather than it being more niche). Personally, I’d prefer to have self-contained binaries for CLI tools, but that’s not much of a big deal–I can probably use Go or similar if that’s really important to me. I’ll play around with it soon. 👍
I really wish the only community options weren’t Discord and GitHub – not even an unofficial Matrix.org room or IRC channel mention (seems IRC used to be supported). I was looking into the language recently as something with types on BEAM, but I felt like there was no option to ask questions toward the community if I had them so I didn’t feel it was worthwhile to read any further.
We did used to use IRC and we looked into Matrix but both lacked the anti-harassment and anti-abuse features that we need to run a community. Community is very important to Gleam so we need to ensure that we can deal with trolls and bigots should they arise.
As a nice unexpected bonus the active community exploded in size once we switched from IRC, it seemed it was a barrier to entry for many people.
Is there a downside for listing unofficial options for people to join at their own risk if they don’t feel comfortable giving their private data to Discord?
It’s tricky. So far the experience with unofficial projects (not unofficial community forums, afaik there are none) is that people still come to the Gleam core team when they want help with them or have a problem to report. It ends up creating additional work for us and we have quite limited time due not having corporate backing.
It would be good to list unofficial forums but we probably need to think carefully about the messaging and expectations around them.
I can understand it from an administrative and marketing standpoint; it’s just a shame that we, society, can’t seem to have the option that protects privacy and also attracts the masses (who are not aware of the privacy threats, or see the convenience as a worthwhile tradeoff). Instead, someone such as myself feels put off and I can’t help be echo the schism it creates noted by the Drew Devault in Please don’t use Discord for FOSS projects . It’s the reason I suggest at a minimum listing unofficial bastions as a compromise.
It’s just too much work I’m afraid. If we had more money we could, but right now I’m stretched thin.
As someone who works on community and chat systems I would love to hear which anti-harassment and anti-abuse features are most important to a community like yours.
Congrats on the new release lpil!
💜
How does the typing for messages work? Are the checks dynamic?
Actors and messages are implemented in the
gleam_erlangandgleam_otplibraries and they are statically checked.