Elm at the helm: Working with a new programming language
By Alex Owusu-Ansah
May 31st 2017At TotallyMoney.com we are using Elm to create an internal administration tool. Elm, being a functional programming language, was quite different from what I am used to working with as the bulk of my experience is with Javascript. Despite this, having Elm at the forefront of our interface has been working well. At first it was intimidating facing a new language with a syntax that was completely different from what I had worked with before. However, as I dove deeper into Elm I was able to get over the hurdle of unfamiliarity and began to see its many benefits. As well as being quite easy to pick up, Elm is also enjoyable to use. The tools make it simple and frictionless to develop, and the compiler makes refactoring a breeze. Some tasks that would usually take days in alternative languages can take only a day or less in Elm. We’ve had zero run-time exceptions and fewer bugs, largely because Elm’s type system forces you to model your domain more carefully. One benefit of this is you can write code that doesn’t need tests, which increases productivity. Here's image of the code and one of the administration tool itself.