Seven More Languages in Seven Weeks

Wrapping Up Elm

You’ve now used Elm to solve a demanding user interface problem. You’ve also seen the concept of reactive programming, expressed in terms of signals. Reactive programming with functional languages will revolutionize the way we build user interfaces in the browser. The revolution is already started.

Strengths

Elm’s primary strengths are the type system and reactive concepts for dealing with events. The result eliminates two of the biggest JavaScript problems: the weak typing model and “callback hell.” The callback model is especially significant.

Also, Elm brings many of the advanced Haskell features to the browser. The type model—partially applied functions and currying—allows much more sophisticated programming, and allows the ...