Elm in Action

Chapter 2. Your first Elm application

This chapter covers

• Declaratively rendering a page
• Managing state with Model-View-Update
• Handling user interaction

Elm applications are built to last. They have a reputation for being scalable, easy to refactor, and difficult to crash unexpectedly. Because JavaScript applications have . . . well . . . a different reputation, it stands to reason that Elm must be doing things differently. And so it is!

Whereas each line of code in a JavaScript application could result in a change or effect—like “update that text!” or “send this to the server!”—the code in an Elm application builds up a description of what the program should do in response to various inputs. Elm’s compiler translates this description into ...