Developer Voices Is Gleam your next programming language?
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May 10, 2023 Louis Pilfold, the creator of the Gleam programming language, explores the developer-friendly innovations that Gleam brings to Erlang's BEAM platform. He discusses the importance of simplicity and resilience in programming languages while emphasizing proper error handling. The conversation delves into Gleam's community engagement and the balance between complexity and usability. Louis also highlights the financial sustainability challenges of open source projects and the governance models affecting language evolution, wrapping up with insights into the supportive Gleam community.
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Language Creation Motivations
- New programming languages are created for research, feature cherry-picking, or filling market needs.
- Gleam combines desirable aspects of several languages, prioritizing developer-friendliness on Erlang's BEAM.
Gleam's Design Philosophy
- Gleam prioritizes a small, consistent surface area, drawing inspiration from Lua and Go.
- It runs on the Erlang virtual machine (BEAM), known for its reliability and industrial focus.
BEAM Reliability Anecdote
- A company using PureScript on the BEAM had a bug causing crashes every 100 frames.
- The system's reliability masked the issue for eight months due to automatic restarts.