# What helped you learn Elm?

**URL:** <https://discourse.elm-lang.org/t/what-helped-you-learn-elm/7959>\
**Category:** Learn\
**Created:** [December 4, 2021, 4:56am UTC](https://discourse.elm-lang.org/t/what-helped-you-learn-elm/7959 "2021-12-04T04:56:14Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 2

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![sephi](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex035/user_avatar/discourse.elm-lang.org/sephi/32/4066_2.png) [@sephi](https://discourse.elm-lang.org/u/sephi)\
**Post date:** [December 22, 2021, 5:56am UTC](https://discourse.elm-lang.org/t/what-helped-you-learn-elm/7959/21 "2021-12-22T05:56:48Z")

</div>

**Background:**  
Backend web developer for the last ~15 years, now mostly Python/Django. I can write vanilla JS, but its fragility (hello undefined) and lack of a good standard library makes me cringe every time I have to use it. I tend to stay away from modern JS frameworks because of their complexity. I have a rather strong opinion on the JS ecosystem.

**How you heard about Elm:**  
I’m not sure but I think it was a colleague of mine who’s into FP stuff who told me about it in 2019.

**Moment you were convinced:**  
I think I was immediately convinced (see the first point below), but my conviction grew stronger during my journey with Elm:

- I was hooked when I read about the “no runtime exceptions thing”. Being used to JS surprises, that looked too good to be true.
- Then when I started using it, and was having a really hard time understanding what I was doing, I was just following the compiler hints on every error, and eventually my code compiled and more importantly it worked! Then I told myself learning this language wouldn’t be that bad and that I could start using it on my projects without really understanding it yet. And since this process was so much fun (understanding the compiler messages and trying to fix my code), I continued using it.
- Getting more into it, and discovering the simplicity of the “framework”: you just need to understand a few concepts to get started (TEA, functions, types). Compared to other JS frameworks (even Vue.js which is supposed to be simple I think), that was so refreshing for me.

Also regarding the initial thread title, what helped me a lot to learn Elm was the guide at [https://elmprogramming.com/](https://elmprogramming.com/). It goes into more detail than the official tutorial and was a great resource for me, who was just starting with Elm and FP in general.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![system](https://canada1.discourse-cdn.com/flex035/uploads/elm_lang/original/1X/50a05e53677a2c3b47776d7abd0f113eb50193a1.png) [@system](https://discourse.elm-lang.org/u/system)\
**Post date:** [January 1, 2022, 5:57am UTC](https://discourse.elm-lang.org/t/what-helped-you-learn-elm/7959/22 "2022-01-01T05:57:24Z")

</div>

This topic was automatically closed 10 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.

[Previous page](https://discourse.elm-lang.org/t/what-helped-you-learn-elm/7959.md?page=1)