Interview with Louis Pilfold on Elixir Gleam
summary
Gleam presents a new functional language that compiles to BEAM and JavaScript, ships a readable-code backend for debugging, and bundles a standard library as a Hex package. Version 0.21 adds a language server with inline errors, hover type info, formatting and go‑to‑definition; auto-complete and type‑directed refactorings are next. The project delivers zero‑cost interop with Erlang/Elixir, and implements typed OTP primitives (gen_server/supervisor equivalents) that run in production, showing the approach actually works.
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chapters (25)
- 0:00Louis Pilfold and Gleam intro
- 0:43What is Gleam
- 1:26Gleam high-level features
- 2:52JS compilation & cross-platform
- 3:55Gleam language server & IDE
- 4:38Developer productivity focus
- 4:59Why Gleam on BEAM
- 6:21Languages inspiring Gleam
- 7:48Gleam philosophy & future
- 9:11Gleam syntax & simplicity
- 10:58Balancing features & simplicity
- 11:40Language design weirdness
- 13:48Type classes & type system
- 15:15BEAM compatibility
- 17:44JS interop & tooling
- 19:51Gleam standard library
- 20:55Readable generated code
- 21:58Building type-safe BEAM
- 23:21Typed OTP in Gleam
- 24:26Gleam 0.21 features
- 26:30Gleam roadmap & tooling
- 28:33Exhaustiveness checking
- 29:58Gleam community growth
- 31:43Improving onboarding
- 33:04Closing remarks
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