I love BEAM since I was first introduced to Erlang.
I think it should be adopted a lot more for codebases
and that it solves a lot of problems in a good way
that are currently solved in bad ways in modern trends.
Clearly there are strong preferences among folks for static or dynamic typing,
almost like vi vs emacs.
My opinion is on typing is:
Stating typing does not slow you down.
With dynamic typing while you are writing code you have to plan
and remember what type a variable of some sort represents before
You can act on it.
With static languages most type of variables will be known at compile time
and can offer good feedback if a type is used in the wrong manner.
It also makes it much easier to know what a variable is and what it might
be doing if it has an official type.
Reading dynamic code I often have to search around a bit to figure out
what a variable is.
I think if the only reason it is "problematic" to have static typing is
because writing "int", "string" etc. is too much work then your priorities
are mixed up.
Sometimes people resort to Hungarian notation to help out.
(Less and less) sName,iAge,etc. That is helpful but you might as well have
static typing at that point.
There has been a lot of work done to find a good way to add (optional)
static typing to Elixir and I think it is on going but represents a hard
problem.
I am glad Gleam is out (https://gleam.run/), it is my favorite BEAM language now.
Clearly there are strong preferences among folks for static or dynamic typing, almost like vi vs emacs.
My opinion is on typing is:
Stating typing does not slow you down.
With dynamic typing while you are writing code you have to plan and remember what type a variable of some sort represents before You can act on it.
With static languages most type of variables will be known at compile time and can offer good feedback if a type is used in the wrong manner. It also makes it much easier to know what a variable is and what it might be doing if it has an official type.
Reading dynamic code I often have to search around a bit to figure out what a variable is.
I think if the only reason it is "problematic" to have static typing is because writing "int", "string" etc. is too much work then your priorities are mixed up.
Sometimes people resort to Hungarian notation to help out. (Less and less) sName,iAge,etc. That is helpful but you might as well have static typing at that point.
There has been a lot of work done to find a good way to add (optional) static typing to Elixir and I think it is on going but represents a hard problem.
I am glad Gleam is out (https://gleam.run/), it is my favorite BEAM language now.