Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Elm

A type inferred, functional reactive language that compiles to HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

Elm

Elm Reviews and Details

This page is designed to help you find out whether Elm is good and if it is the right choice for you.

Screenshots and images

  • Elm Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-09-23

Features & Specs

  1. Strong Type System

    Elm's type system is designed to catch errors at compile-time, reducing runtime errors and improving code reliability. It emphasizes immutability, making it easier to reason about and maintain code.

  2. No Runtime Exceptions

    Elm enforces safety with its type system, ensuring that runtime exceptions are almost impossible. This leads to more robust and predictable applications.

  3. Friendly Error Messages

    Elm's compiler provides exceptionally helpful and user-friendly error messages, which make debugging easier and learning the language more approachable.

  4. Optimized Performance

    Elm's compiler generates highly optimized JavaScript, resulting in fast and efficient applications. Performance tuning is handled by the compiler, freeing developers from many optimization concerns.

  5. Functional Programming

    Elm is purely functional, promoting a clear and declarative coding style. It encourages developers to write more predictable and maintainable code by leveraging functional programming principles.

  6. Built-In Architecture

    The Elm Architecture (Model-Update-View) provides a consistent pattern for building applications, which can simplify the development process and improve code organization.

  7. Interoperability with JavaScript

    Elm allows you to seamlessly integrate with existing JavaScript code through ports, giving you the flexibility to gradually adopt Elm or work with libraries that are not available in Elm.

Badges

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Videos

Nightmare on Elm St (series review)

A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) - Movie Review

A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master - Movie Review

Social recommendations and mentions

We have tracked the following product recommendations or mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you see what people think about Elm and what they use it for.
  • Play: UI Layouts in PureScript
    With this article I hope to attract more attention to the languages like PureScript, or Unison or LEAN, or Haskell or Elm and its descendants, because they not only bring mathematical beauty in the world (I say it from the position of the guy who totally didn't like maths at school, though gladly read books from Martin Gardner or Lewis Carroll about Logic), but also the code written using them is stable, easy to... - Source: dev.to / 6 months ago
  • What it was like to give a talk at Clojure South 2025
    I had two possible topics in mind. One about teaching Clojure and Functional Programming to beginners (because of my course Clojure: Introduรงรฃo ร  Programaรงรฃo Funcional; an Introduction to Functional Programming through Clojure, for Brazilians). And another about a project I built at the company where I work, using Clojure in the backend and the programming language Elm for the front-end. - Source: dev.to / 8 months ago
  • How was my experience at Lambda Days 2025
    For those who donโ€™t know him, Evan is the creator of the Elm programming language and probably my favorite speaker! I am a great admirer of his technical abilities, but I am also equally impressed by the philosophical ideas he often includes in his speeches. - Source: dev.to / 8 months ago
  • How to build a reliable web application with Elm, GraphQL, PostGraphile and PostgreSQL
    To do that, we will use the Elm programming language. - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
  • 3 Options to Avoid Side-Effects in Web Dev
    Use languages that donโ€™t have side-effects; Elm for UI, and Roc for API/CLI. - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
  • Reactivity in Programming
    Reactive programming itself is rarely found in pure form. It is often combined with other paradigms. This is how such mixes as Imperative Reactive Programming, Object-Oriented Reactive Programming and Functional Reactive Programming appeared. The latter is the most popular, and the Elm language is considered one of its main representatives. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • Tsonnet #13 - Carets, columns, and clues: adding lexing error tracing
    I've drawn inspiration from Elm and the blog post Compiler Errors for Humans -- it is nearly a decade old and still inspiring to read. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • An Ode to TypeScript Enums
    When I see this it makes me want to run for ReasonML/ReScript/Elm/PureScript. Sum types (without payloads on the instances they are effectively enums) should not require a evening filling ceremonial dance event to define. https://reasonml.github.io/ https://rescript-lang.org/ https://elm-lang.org/ https://www.purescript.org/ (any I forgot?) It's nice that TS is a strict super set of JS... But that's about the only... - Source: Hacker News / over 1 year ago
  • TypeScript's Lack of Naming Types and Type Conversion in Angular
    Elm, ReScript, F#, Ocaml, Scalaโ€ฆ itโ€™s just normal to name your types, then use them places. In fact, youโ€™ll often create the types _before_ the code, even if youโ€™re not really practicing DDD (Domain Driven Design). Yes, youโ€™ll do many after the fact when doing functions, or you start testing things and decide to change your design, and make new types. Either way, itโ€™s just โ€œthe normโ€. You then do the other norms... - Source: dev.to / almost 2 years ago
  • How I host Elm web applications with GitHub Pages
    A web application makes use of these same ingredients, i.e. HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, but it uses significantly more JavaScript. As the JavaScript powering your web application grows in size it can bring with it a variety of problems that a few languages, like TypeScript, ReScript, PureScript, and Elm, have attempted to solve. Each of the aforementioned compile to JavaScript languages have their pros and cons but... - Source: dev.to / almost 2 years ago
  • Using ChatGPT o1 to write UI code with Elm
    After I finished my Oauth 2 Token Exchange demo project, I suddenly had a desire to write the front end UI with Elm language. Elm is my favorite front end language: elegant, functional, strongly typed. - Source: dev.to / almost 2 years ago
  • Ask HN: Is webdev getting complicated without results to show for it?
    TL;DR: Yes and it's creating "It's X and limited by Y, but it works" projects In web front-end, the same pattern crops up repeatedly. Two examples: * Elm[1]: It's brutally functional and limited by purity, but it works * htmx[2]: It's grug-brained[3] and limited by that, but it works I'll let others enumerate web frameworks. On desktop, uxn and Varvara software[4] by Hundred Rabbits fit the same pattern: * 64k of... - Source: Hacker News / almost 2 years ago
  • Building a subscription tracker Desktop and iOS app with compose multiplatformโ€”Providing feedbacks
    I have first heard about it when I was working with Elm [1] through a popular blog post (at the time) How elm slays a UI antipattern. - Source: dev.to / about 2 years ago
  • Yet Another Tour of an Open-Source Elm SPA
    Dwayne/elm-conduit is built from scratch using the full power of Elm, no holds barred. This is how I would architect and build a reliable, maintainable, and scalable production-ready Elm web application. - Source: dev.to / about 2 years ago
  • Ludic: New framework for Python with seamless Htmx support
    Elm [1] is based on a similar idea. Build your app from pure functions that return HTML tags. [1] https://elm-lang.org/. - Source: Hacker News / over 2 years ago
  • Learning Elm by porting a medium-sized web front end from React (2019)
    Elm is a lovely lang. It would be nice to have modern APIs on it. here's the project for new eyes: https://github.com/elm/core. - Source: Hacker News / over 2 years ago
  • Can you make your own JavaScript by implementing ECMAScript standard?
    You also wouldn't really be creating your own new programing language. You would be creating something that can run JavaScript by following JavaScript standards and syntax. You might be able to add some non-standard features of your own on top of those standards, or include your own standard library of helpers or utilities, but you can't completely make a new or alternative language and then load it in the... Source: over 2 years ago
  • What is the best way to present the user the results of Haskell computations?
    You should at least have a look at https://elm-lang.org/ it is a pure functional language like Haskell (although with fewer fancy syntax/type classes) but it has some lovely libraries for visualisation and even with plain elm (+ elm-ui) doing string transformations can be easily done. Source: over 2 years ago
  • Building React Components Using Unions in TypeScript
    I get it. However, the whole point of using Unions to narrow your types, ensure only a set of possible scenarios can occur, and only access data of a particular union when itโ€™s safe to do so. Thatโ€™s some of what pattern matching can provide, and 100% of what using switch statements in TypeScript with their Discriminated Unions can provide. Yes, itโ€™s not 100% exhaustive, but TypeScript is not soundly typed, and... - Source: dev.to / almost 3 years ago
  • How to render a basic calendar UI in Elm
    The beauty of a language like Elm (and other lambda-calculus / functional programming inspired languages) is that there's very little transformation involved in going from an idea to code. And that seems to have a big impact on getting things done. - Source: dev.to / almost 3 years ago
  • Ask HN: When is pure functional programming beneficial?
    GUI programming is fine in purely functional programming, see for example elm[0], where you have a Model - Update - View paradigm to build frontends. Another example of GUI programming in Pure FP is functional reactive programming[1]. [0] https://elm-lang.org/. - Source: Hacker News / about 3 years ago

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Is Elm good? This is an informative page that will help you find out. Moreover, you can review and discuss Elm here. The primary details have not been verified within the last quarter, and they might be outdated. If you think we are missing something, please use the means on this page to comment or suggest changes. All reviews and comments are highly encouranged and appreciated as they help everyone in the community to make an informed choice. Please always be kind and objective when evaluating a product and sharing your opinion.