Gleam v1.12

https://github.com/gleam-lang/gleam/blob/main/changelog/v1.12.md

166•Alupis•6mo ago

Comments

Alupis•6mo ago

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:

    pub fn find_book() -> Result(Book, LibraryError) {
      case ask_for_isbn() {
        Error(error) -> Error(error)
        Ok(isbn) -> load_book(isbn)
      }
    }

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.

    pub fn hello_test() {
      telephone.ring()
      |> should.equal("Hello, Joe!")
    }

The pipe skips so much boilerplate and clearly communicates intent. Absolutely love it.

[1] https://gleam.run/news/no-more-dependency-management-headach...

steve_adams_86•6mo ago

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.

Alupis•6mo ago

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.

steve_adams_86•6mo ago

I've been considering trying this, but my team already struggles to properly adopt TypeScript so I'm fairly sure introducing Gleam would cause a few people to throw me out a window.

giraffe_lady•6mo ago

Gleam is so much smaller and easier than typescript and the type system works harder for what it is. TS gets you because it is similar to javascript in some ways that make it easier to start the transition. But a complete js -> ts transition is about as big a deal as it would be from js to any other language, except you can use the same external libraries.

anon3459•6mo ago

No just no

giraffe_lady•6mo ago

Sorry but yes. Pure structural typing is a dead end hindley milner is the future.

fpauser•6mo ago

;)

giacomocava•6mo ago

Omg yes, pattern matching is such an amazing feature I miss it dearly in languages that don't have it!

ZpJuUuNaQ5•6mo ago

>It's just so elegant to read and write.

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.

lpil•6mo ago

If you've examples of code you have in Elixir that you could not express well in Gleam I would be very happy to help you out with that.

The two languages are almost the same at the value level, so code should translate across well.

Alupis•6mo ago

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.

lpil•6mo ago

> Gleam seems to have a lot of obvious influences from Rust, and the creator is a rust dev.

Hi! That's me!

Gleam the language doesn't have any Rust influence really. It's a happy accident that some of the syntax ended up looking the same, but that's likely due to both being inspired by similar languages such as OCaml and the C family. Most the syntax and the semantics predate Gleam's compiler being rewritten in Rust.

The build tool is a rip-off of Cargo for sure though.

Alupis•6mo ago

> The build tool is a rip-off of Cargo for sure though.

Hey, great artists steal, as the saying goes...

It's all shaped up really nice. I'm a big fan of Gleam and your work in general.

lpil•6mo ago

Thank you, very kind.

zem•6mo ago

more like both gleam and rust have a strong ML influence (gleam might actually consider itself an ML? not sure about that, but it's definitely a descendant)

innocentoldguy•6mo ago

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.

chamomeal•6mo ago

How does it bastardize the beam? Like are there things you can do in elixir/erlang that you couldn’t with gleam?

Alupis•6mo ago

I'm curious to know what the parent meant, as well. My understanding, which is incomplete admittedly, is that Gleam's type system lives in Gleam and isn't carried over into the produced Erlang/BEAM code, since BEAM has no concept of types, etc.

Gleam also has an OTP implementation[1] available, which includes Actors and the like. My understanding is that every BEAM language must implement OTP themselves, so there's nothing unusual here.

[1] https://hexdocs.pm/gleam_otp/

innocentoldguy•5mo ago

Gleam's type system is the root cause of the problem. Please see my reply to the parent of your post.

innocentoldguy•5mo ago

It has been a while since I looked at Gleam. Some things may have changed. However, the last time I used Gleam, I was forced to switch back to Elixir because Gleam:

• Lacks support for named processes.

• Has limited actor abstractions.

• Doesn't support OTP system messages.

• Has implemented supervisors in a way that can lead to improper shutdowns, data loss, and deviations from the expected BEAM behavior.

• Doesn't support pattern matching directly in function definitions. Instead, it requires you to use case statements.

• Doesn't support global mutable variables because it has no way to track variable types and state changes when BEAM modifies these variables, which is one of the hallmark features of BEAM.

• Doesn't support hot code reloading.

All of these features, which are readily available in Erlang and Elixir, are far more important to me than static typing. I've used statically typed languages like C, C++, C#, and Java, and dynamically typed languages like Python, Ruby, and Elixir throughout my 30+ years career. I've never once lamented not having static types, nor have I ever jumped for joy when I do. For me, static vs. dynamic typing is largely irrelevant and doesn't affect my work one way or the other.

thijsvandien•6mo ago

Error(error) -> Error(error) has strong if err != nil { return err; } vibes, and I don't consider that a good thing.

Alupis•6mo ago

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.

samdoesnothing•6mo ago

Good Go code also wraps errors...

wavemode•6mo ago

It's not just about wrapping. use-expressions, result.try and result.map eliminate the boilerplate of checking for errors entirely: https://erikarow.land/notes/using-use-gleam

samdoesnothing•6mo ago

One man's boilerplate is another man's explicitness.

debugnik•6mo ago

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.

[1]: https://gleam.run/news/v0.25-introducing-use-expressions/

bmacho•6mo ago

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.

smithcoin•6mo ago

Interesting, I find myself thinking the exact opposite.

no_wizard•6mo ago

snake case convention is the only thing that always feels odd to me.

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!

Alupis•6mo ago

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.

zelphirkalt•6mo ago

One thing I disliked is black, the Python formatter, with its utterly naive rules, that treat all code the same. It required me to workaround in many places, like always using a trailing comma for any list or tuple, to keep the items on separate lines, instead of black fumbling around and putting them on the same line. It was utterly annoying. This made me very vary of "opinionated" (read: inflexible unconfigurable pieces of software) formatters. Hopefully Gleam's formatter isn't as stupid as black is.

__jonas•6mo ago

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

https://github.com/sveltejs/svelte/issues/3479#issuecomment-...

plainOldText•6mo ago

Yeah, CamelCase for modules, snake_case for functions and variables.

Your brain can instantly tell what entity you’re dealing with.

ASalazarMX•6mo ago

The official website has an interesting footer

> 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.

SwiftyBug•6mo ago

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.

steve_adams_86•6mo ago

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.

Alupis•6mo ago

Joining their Discord and getting greeted by the language creator himself within a few minutes was pretty cool. Most other languages, their creators/maintainers seem so unapproachable and distant. You can talk directly with the core team on there, ask questions, etc. Louis really has built a pretty fun community around Gleam.

batisteo•6mo ago

The good thing is, you don't have to be tolerant with the intolerant. And that's exactly what they are advertising. It let the nice people flow in, as you experienced.

steve_adams_86•6mo ago

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.

AnEro•6mo ago

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.

steve_adams_86•6mo ago

I get that. You can put up the signs, but it doesn't need to be a regular, loud topic in the community. In fact, the signs should serve to prevent the need to discuss it in the community and make moderation cleaner and easier.

ModernMech•6mo ago

I like what Rust does: they make the LGBTQ+ flag the background of the discord icon. Nuff said.

zdragnar•6mo ago

I dunno, it seems like everyone should have learned lessons from the sordid scala and node drama incidents, but instead they're just forgotten.

Don't make in groups and out groups. Just have a "be nice" rule and leave it at that.

steve_adams_86•6mo ago

The trouble is that nazis think it's very nice to get rid of the untouchables. Life is messy, you've got to set some boundaries and stick to them or jerks gum up the works.

ASalazarMX•6mo ago

Then they're evidently not being nice to the ones they deem untouchables, and can be expelled.

lpil•6mo ago

> It shouldn't be that blatantly ideological from the get go. It's just another programming language, not a political platform.

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.

giraffe_lady•6mo ago

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.

lpil•6mo ago

Thank you, you are very kind. I am extremely proud of the community, they are wonderful lot.

tuttigachimuchi•6mo ago

Programming languages aren’t math—they are cultural products that have the right to express their values and objectives

turnsout•6mo ago

Being anti-nazi is not ideological.

ribelo•6mo ago

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.

timeon•6mo ago

Sure but 'not giving a shit' means accepting Nazism.

Alupis•6mo ago

> Sure but 'not giving a shit' means accepting Nazism.

This is some "critical theory" nonsense. The real world isn't divided into two camps, "those actively for" and "those actively against". You can, and should, just go about your life.

You'll live a happier, more mentally-healthy life by just ignoring the noise and not getting pulled into some sort of "if you're not with us, you're against us" thing.

Gleam is a language, and just like all languages - be it English, Spanish, C++, Python, musical notes, and more - both agreeable and disagreeable people will use it. It's impossible to prevent people who you disagree with from using a language. There's no point in even trying - all you succeed in doing is giving yourself mental grief, anxiety and hardship.

Just do your thing...

zdragnar•6mo ago

But how will you control people if you haven't put them in little boxes first?

turnsout•6mo ago

I think it's valuable for the leaders of a community to make it clear what kind of a community they're trying to build. If you think being anti-Nazi is like, "woke nonsense," then you know that the Gleam community is not going to be for you.

Does that prevent a Nazi from using Gleam? No. But the actual objective is to set the tone.

lowboy•6mo ago

> It's impossible to prevent people who you disagree with from using a language

True, but the message on the website starts with "As a community...", and speaks to participation in the Gleam community, not the usage of Gleam as a language. And participation within a community _can_ be prevented by its stewards.

Alupis•6mo ago

I just want to point out, this conversation has been had over and over, on HN, in the Gleam Discord, and I'm sure in many other places as well - always spurred by the same statement on the Gleam website.

So instead of discussing one of the most beautiful programming languages ever created, we're discussing politics, virtues, and wannabe Nazis. Because of a single sentence on the website...

I don't care either way, but it is notable how distracting that seemingly innocuous statement has become.

Could the community goals not be accomplished in a possibly less divisive way? The first part of the community statement seems entirely sufficient to me.

So, while I don't care and will continue to use Gleam regardless, it does seem to me that greeting curious potential new users with any particular brand of politics (righteous or not) is possibly antithetical to the goals of the language.

lowboy•6mo ago

I haven't seen any of the previous iterations of the conversation, nor have I had a chance to try Gleam (though it is on my short list!).

> greeting curious potential new users with any particular brand of politics (righteous or not) is possibly antithetical to the goals of the language

But it might be an important goal for the community.

Alupis•6mo ago

I don't believe even a little bit the success of the community has anything to do with this sentence on the website. The success of the community belongs to the relentless hard work of Louis et al.

The sentence is a source of continuous friction between the language, community, and public. It just seems so... unnecessary.

Half of this thread was consumed with people discussing politics and virtues instead of the v1.12 release - that is a pretty large problem for the language, objectively.

When people google Gleam, they'll find pages/discussions like this instead of people discussing the merits of certain syntax or libraries, new features and the like.

There's a reason most businesses/organizations don't engage in politics... even if the founders have very strong political views.

lowboy•6mo ago

Your metrics for community success might be misaligned with those of the community stewards.

There's more room for interpretation in "all backgrounds, genders, and experience levels are welcome and respected equally" than with the explicit stated support for BLM, trans rights, and anti-nazi ideologies. Room for interpretation on codes of conduct make for more moderation work, allowing more undesirable behaviours to crop up.

> There's a reason most businesses/organizations don't engage in politics... even if the founders have very strong political views

Yes, but that might not be the goals of the Gleam stewards. Maybe they would rather take a moral stance even if it hurts Gleam's reach.

ribelo•6mo ago

Yeah, like not spending your every penny on poor is accepting a misery.

In The Good Place, a brilliant show, there’s a great scene where we find out why people stopped getting into the "Good Place" after they died. Life used to be simple before: if you bought your wife a flower, it was a straightforward good deed. Now every action is tainted, because the CEO of the flower company employs child labor, cheats on his wife, and murders bees with pesticides. Ah, and he is an nazi.

No, that’s not how it is at all. Nobody is obligated to give a damn. Not fighting isn’t the same as supporting, and that’s the biggest lie that has thoroughly fucked this world. It’s the exact opposite: only not giving a shit can still save it.

AnEro•6mo ago

> 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.

akkad33•6mo ago

But this is not very relevant to the release announcement?

buzzerbetrayed•6mo ago

When you put distracting things on your homepage, don't be surprised when they're distracting

akkad33•6mo ago

I didn't find it distracting. Why you?

ModernMech•6mo ago

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.

ForceBru•6mo ago

> 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.

atomfinger•6mo ago

> 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".

arrowsmith•6mo ago

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?

alain_gilbert•6mo ago

The most ironic thing is that if you search for "nazi programming language" you'll find gleam.

terminatornet•6mo ago

Counterpoint: it's actually good to be vocally against nazi bullshit

brightball•6mo ago

Great talk on Gleam from August last year.

https://youtu.be/vyEWc0-kbkw

okkdev•6mo ago

The link should probably point to the excellent 1.12.0 post on the website: https://gleam.run/news/no-more-dependency-management-headach...

mistahchris•6mo ago

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.

ninetyninenine•6mo ago

I tried to make a c-compiler in gleam. One thing I really didn't like is the lack of interfaces/type-classes and lack of composition operator.

Alupis•6mo ago

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.

[1] https://gleam.run/frequently-asked-questions/#will-gleam-hav...

ninetyninenine•6mo ago

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.

kamilap•6mo ago

video walkthrough for v1.12 from a core team member: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYvydMeTpzQ

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Gleam v1.12

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