Elm pioneer Richard Feldman returns to explain why he made Roc, a direct descendant of Elm. He notes a distinct trade-off of choosing not to have persistent data structures. Later, he shares how his experience teaching Elm informed Roc's design. We even learn about the power of platforms.

Thanks to our sponsor, Logistically. Email: elmtown@logisticallyinc.com.

Music by Jesse Moore.

Recording date: 2024.05.23

Guest

• Richard Feldman

Show notes

[00:00:20] Non-introduction

• Roc
• Software Unscripted
• "Making Impossible States Impossible"
• "Scaling Elm Apps"
• Elm in Action
• Elm courses on Frontend Masters

[00:01:47] Motivations to make Roc

[00:04:53] Back to the beginnings in 2018

[00:15:25] How Roc compares to Elm

• Aaron VonderHaar's elm-format
• Elm Style Guide
• "Bret Victor style reactive debugging" by Laszlo Pandy at Elm Workshop 2013 (YouTube)
• "Functional Semantics in Imperative Clothing"

[00:25:18] Minimizing the erosion of simplicity (governance models)

• "BDFN" on roc-lang.org
• Episode "Programming and Industrial Design with Greg Wilson" of Software Unscripted

[00:31:36] How teaching Elm informed Roc's design

[00:40:34] Design process

• Episode "The Roc Programming Language with Richard Feldman" of Software Unscripted

[00:45:04] Working at Zed Industries

• Zed

[00:50:28] Platforms

[00:58:03] Picks

Richard's picks

• Performance-Aware Programming Series by Casey Muratori
• Software You Can Love (SYCL) Milan 2024 playlist (YouTube)
• "Hybrid-Level Programming" by Richard Feldman at SYCL Milan 2024 (YouTube)
• Reliqa

Jared's picks

• Umphrey's McGee
• Bret Victor