Someday I see it being an awesome back-end language too, but that's quite a ways off I think. With respect to the browser, I see the future of Elm being one where Elm's ecosystem becomes one of its biggest selling points.
Right now Elm's ecosystem is much smaller than JavaScript's, so ecosystem is a drawback overall. However, the overall quality of the Elm ecosystem is much higher - in terms of usability and reliability - than the (much larger!) JS ecosystem. I think this quality-over-size trend is likely to continue, because Elm's package manager has a blanket policy of accepting only Elm code, not JavaScript code.
As the gaps in the ecosystem fill in over time, I see the high-quality Elm ecosystem becoming a big selling point. Today people say "Elm's ecosystem is so small, you inevitably have to do some JS interop" but I think in the future people will say "Elm's ecosystem is big enough to meet all the needs of a typical web app, and it is so much nicer than the JS ecosystem."
We're not there yet, but we're headed in that direction. It will take time, but I think it'll absolutely be worth it. :)
Can you envision Elm becoming more mainstream?
Definitely. For any language aimed at industry use, I think success stories among industry early adopters are likely to predict long-term adoption. A very high percentage of Elm's early adopter stories are on the extreme end of positive.
I think the direction JS is moving is helping Elm out a lot. Virtual DOM libraries, type-checking, and functional programming concepts are all becoming more mainstream in JS, each of which narrows the familiarity gap between what people are using on JS teams and what they could be using if they introduced Elm.
How do you feel the community can help make this happen?
Posting experience reports. These are the biggest ways to help things become more mainstream, because people look for data points when making decisions about whether to dive into a language.
"I am thinking about trying Elm. Who else has done that? How did it go? Would the benefits help our team too? Did the costs seem like costs we can accept?" The more data points out there, the more easily people can make informed decisions about these things.
Our story at NoRedInk is out there, but do people know your story? If not, help them out by writing about it!
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Where do you see the future of Elm?
Someday I see it being an awesome back-end language too, but that's quite a ways off I think. With respect to the browser, I see the future of Elm being one where Elm's ecosystem becomes one of its biggest selling points.
Right now Elm's ecosystem is much smaller than JavaScript's, so ecosystem is a drawback overall. However, the overall quality of the Elm ecosystem is much higher - in terms of usability and reliability - than the (much larger!) JS ecosystem. I think this quality-over-size trend is likely to continue, because Elm's package manager has a blanket policy of accepting only Elm code, not JavaScript code.
As the gaps in the ecosystem fill in over time, I see the high-quality Elm ecosystem becoming a big selling point. Today people say "Elm's ecosystem is so small, you inevitably have to do some JS interop" but I think in the future people will say "Elm's ecosystem is big enough to meet all the needs of a typical web app, and it is so much nicer than the JS ecosystem."
We're not there yet, but we're headed in that direction. It will take time, but I think it'll absolutely be worth it. :)
Can you envision Elm becoming more mainstream?
Definitely. For any language aimed at industry use, I think success stories among industry early adopters are likely to predict long-term adoption. A very high percentage of Elm's early adopter stories are on the extreme end of positive.
I think the direction JS is moving is helping Elm out a lot. Virtual DOM libraries, type-checking, and functional programming concepts are all becoming more mainstream in JS, each of which narrows the familiarity gap between what people are using on JS teams and what they could be using if they introduced Elm.
How do you feel the community can help make this happen?
Posting experience reports. These are the biggest ways to help things become more mainstream, because people look for data points when making decisions about whether to dive into a language.
"I am thinking about trying Elm. Who else has done that? How did it go? Would the benefits help our team too? Did the costs seem like costs we can accept?" The more data points out there, the more easily people can make informed decisions about these things.
Our story at NoRedInk is out there, but do people know your story? If not, help them out by writing about it!