zlacker

[return to "I tried Gleam for Advent of Code"]
1. threet+16[view] [source] 2025-12-13 17:46:42
>>tymsca+(OP)
It’s really good. But it needs generics. This is a huge downside. It’s a typed and clean functional programming language but it arbitrarily followed golangs early philosophy of no generics. Ironically golang is one of the most hated languages among many fp advocates.

By the developers own action of adding generics ultimately the golang team admits they were wrong or that generics are better. If gleam gets popular I think much of the same will occur.

There’s simply too much repeated code without generics. I tried writing a parser combinator in gleam and it wasn’t pretty.

◧◩
2. Nathan+I8[view] [source] 2025-12-13 18:07:04
>>threet+16
I saw your other comment that you meant interface. But an example of a language that went without a feature people thought the language desperately needed was Go with generics. They only added them more than ten years later, when they figured out the best way to implement them.

It might be the same with gleam, with first version in 2019 and 1.0 in 2024. The language authors might think they are either uneeded and lead to anti patterns, or are waiting to see the best way to implement them.

[go to top]