The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source The Roc programming language (Interview)
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Jun 11, 2025 
Richard Feldman, creator of the Roc programming language and author of Elm in Action, shares insights into his innovative project inspired by Elm. They discuss features like static dispatch, opportunistic mutation, and its dual structure for platforms and applications. Feldman emphasizes Roc's friendly compiler and performance benefits compared to giants like Go and Rust. The conversation also touches on community engagement, unique error handling, and the challenges of integrating new programming languages into the development landscape.
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Roc Expands on Elm's Vision
- Roc is inspired directly by Elm but expands beyond frontend web development to many domains like CLI apps and robotics.
- Its goal is a friendly, ergonomically designed functional language usable for a wide range of programming tasks.
Roc's Syntax Meets Semantics
- Roc's syntax was redesigned to resemble mainstream languages for better adoption, while preserving Elm-like semantics.
- This change enables static dispatch features and resolves issues incompatible with Elm's original syntax.
Static Dispatch Simplifies APIs
- Roc supports static dispatch, calling module functions based on variable types without inheritance or runtime lookups.
- This design enables simple APIs with features like operator overloading via function naming conventions.
