Insights from Elm Europe

[Janiczek]

So, the Elm Europe 2018 conference is over! There are a few things I’ve learned - I’ll list them below, but I hope you’ll reply with your insights too!

Evan Czaplicki - What is success?

Healthy culture supports diverse community, which supports sustainability, which in the end (incidentally?) supports some of the JS norms of success (GitHub stars etc.)

Brian Hicks - Let’s make nice packages

The loop to strive to be in:
10 GATHER EXPERIENCE
20 FIND PRIOR ART
30 WRITE NICE API
40 WRITE THE DOCS
50 PUBLISH
60 GOTO 10

Ian Mackenzie - Porting C++ and Scala to Elm

Let things be different (Vector vs UnitVector == Direction)

Let functions be separate (dot product for Direction == componentIn: better name, even though it has the same implementation)

Richard Feldman - Make Data Structures

Think about your types before starting with the implementation!
Go opaque by default. Force yourself to create types only by a few predefined paths.

Joël Quenneville - Working With Maybe

Don’t use Maybe if you don’t need to.

Maybe is better than pseudo-Nothing (eg. empty strings) though.

Custom union types document your domain better than Maybes.

Don’t allow business model functions to accept Maybe as an argument. (Keep it on the edges of the system.)

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There were a few great talks about migrating to Elm from the CEO / company perspective - didn’t take notes for these, but will make my superiors watch them

[ccapndave]

I learnt that Elm Europe attendees know how to drink.

[nikolaipaul]

I hope so or else they would die of thirst : - ).

[Dan_Abrams]

I learned that the real monads are the friends we made along the journey.

[Ganesh_Adapa]

Hey @Dan_Abrams,
Would you be able to share any good examples of using monads.
I’ve recently started learning Elm and have a bit of fear on monads.
Looking out for simple but practical examples of using monads in elm.

–g

[Dan_Abrams]

I’m sure this is my fault for trying to joke when I was so tired. My post above was a joke. A parody of the tendency of Hollywood movies to end with a character realizing that the real message was right in front of them, such as in the Wizard of Oz.

I’m probably not the best monad teacher, but I recommend creating a new thread asking for monad examples and I’m sure someone will come up with some clear examples.

[Janiczek]

I thought for sure @Ganesh_Adapa must be trolling you…

[Dan_Abrams]

No, no. I can see how this could be reasonably difficult for someone who’s not necessarily familir wirh American idioms, or for whom English is not a native language. Given how I’ve been making my way through a foreign language this week, I have a lot of respect for it.