Elm Town

Elm Town 87 – Wonder: From machine to mob learning with Sophie Collard

Sep 23, 2025
Guest
Sophie Collard
Sophie Collard, an energy engineer turned software developer, shares her incredible journey into programming. She discusses transitioning from environmental work to backend coding and her discovery of Elm. Sophie dives into building a robust 10k-line app and the benefits of mob programming as a teaching method. She shares insights on integrating Leaflet.js with Elm for interactive maps and introduces her rail-focused travel search app, Railpackers. Plus, she talks about creating a JSONPath library, showcasing her passion for functional programming.
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ADVICE

Learn FP By Studying Together

  • Learn functional programming collaboratively by reading a foundational book together.
  • Use regular group sessions to level up engineers from diverse backgrounds quickly.
INSIGHT

Elm Is Simple Yet Scalable

  • Sophie found Elm approachable because its small, consistent syntax lets you build UIs quickly.
  • She also felt Elm scales well from small projects to larger UIs without ecosystem friction.
ADVICE

Teach With Mob Programming

  • Use mob programming to teach languages and share knowledge interactively.
  • Rotate the keyboard quickly so everyone contributes ideas and learns by doing.
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