The more it goes, the more I think Gleam isn't meant to replace Elixir or Erlang at all. I would have expected much more emphasis on the BEAM, showcasing hot code reloading and fault tolerance using supervision trees in a live server app (just like we have in Elixir and Erlang). But the direction Gleam has taken recently seems to be towards developer convenience, which is nice _as long as_ there _is_ a compelling reason to code in Gleam in the first place. I'm sure with Lustre and some other libs they're working on making Gleam a serious language, but so far it's not able to do what Elixir does.
I don’t know if replacing Elixir is even one of the top 10 reasons Gleam exists. People don’t usually pick a platform and then pick a language.
Many times a language develops into an option by bundling features. In Gleam’s case, they bundled a certain type system, extreme developer convenience, and optionally features from BEAM.
The tooling for Gleam, although not perfect, is one of the best among more younger languages. The other day I saw a post about Crystal here that got me interested, but the LSP and code formatting aren't very good, which makes the whole experience a lot worse. Programming with Gleam is fun in part thanks to the tooling.
The more it goes, the more I think Gleam isn't meant to replace Elixir or Erlang at all. I would have expected much more emphasis on the BEAM, showcasing hot code reloading and fault tolerance using supervision trees in a live server app (just like we have in Elixir and Erlang). But the direction Gleam has taken recently seems to be towards developer convenience, which is nice _as long as_ there _is_ a compelling reason to code in Gleam in the first place. I'm sure with Lustre and some other libs they're working on making Gleam a serious language, but so far it's not able to do what Elixir does.
I don’t know if replacing Elixir is even one of the top 10 reasons Gleam exists. People don’t usually pick a platform and then pick a language.
Many times a language develops into an option by bundling features. In Gleam’s case, they bundled a certain type system, extreme developer convenience, and optionally features from BEAM.
Great Gleam talk if you’re curious. Got me interested in trying it.
https://youtu.be/vyEWc0-kbkw?si=sm0SbSNF_w5ouVc2
> the language server (which is included within the gleam binary) now provides the "find references" feature
This was my #1 most wanted feature, I’m so grateful to Surya for implementing it, he’s amazing!!
The tooling for Gleam, although not perfect, is one of the best among more younger languages. The other day I saw a post about Crystal here that got me interested, but the LSP and code formatting aren't very good, which makes the whole experience a lot worse. Programming with Gleam is fun in part thanks to the tooling.