This is common reaction to Elm and especially to Elm.
I also use Elixir and it has great community and everything, but somehow Elm is even more.
All the concerns about 'unpopular' languages, lack of tooling, I feel it is quite the opposite. Elm formatter changed how I work and now I started using it in other languages, Elixir and JS are using it more, or maybe I just started paying more attention.
There are other smaller things that I noticed.
I wish I can work more in Elm, not less.
Also one more thing. Elm made me wish to be way better programmer. You are surrounded by smart people and you just need to show more if you want to keep up.
When you say smarter programmer I understand what you mean. But the way I look at it, Elm allows me to relax and be a dumber programmer. I commit my smarts up front to the type design and interfaces between types and then I can relax as the project grows from there because the compiler will enforce the invariants I've encoded into the types. Pure Bliss.
> Elm allows me to relax and be a dumber programmer
Yes, this! I don't feel smart enough to write programs well in JavaScript. Elm brings clarity and confidence without having to second-guess myself all the time (thanks to the compiler and fantastic error messages).
The beauty of strong static typing–you don't need to get the types right immediately. Just get an initial design out the door and iterate towards better designs as you go. The compiler helps you tremendously for refactoring, and managed deprecations let you change types gradually over time.
I also use Elixir and it has great community and everything, but somehow Elm is even more.
All the concerns about 'unpopular' languages, lack of tooling, I feel it is quite the opposite. Elm formatter changed how I work and now I started using it in other languages, Elixir and JS are using it more, or maybe I just started paying more attention.
There are other smaller things that I noticed.
I wish I can work more in Elm, not less.
Also one more thing. Elm made me wish to be way better programmer. You are surrounded by smart people and you just need to show more if you want to keep up.