Hacker News: lpil

New comment by lpil in "Elixir v1.20: Now a gradually typed language"

lpil — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 15:27:11 +0000

We should really remove the cheatsheets, they have not been maintained in many years.

New comment by lpil in "Elixir v1.20: Now a gradually typed language"

lpil — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 21:37:16 +0000

What were the inaccuracies? I'm not aware of any, but we can fix any that are found right away.

New comment by lpil in "Elixir v1.20: Now a gradually typed language"

lpil — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 21:36:18 +0000

Hi, I'm the lead maintainer of Gleam.

> I don't know the current state of Gleam OTP, but last I checked it wasn't great.

Gleam uses regular OTP, it doesn't have a distinct OTP framework separate from other BEAM languages.

New comment by lpil in "Elixir v1.20: Now a gradually typed language"

lpil — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 21:35:36 +0000

Hello! I'm the maintainer of Gleam. We are not rewriting OTP, regular OTP is used in Gleam. Most commonly the typed Gleam APIs for OTP are used, but you can use the untyped Erlang APIs if you wish.

This is the same as in Elixir, where macro-enabled APIs are offered, and they just wrap the regular Erlang APIs.

New comment by lpil in "The Gleam Programming Language"

lpil — Sun, 18 Jan 2026 20:04:43 +0000

It only happens on hacker news. Elsewhere it is not mentioned or it is praised.

Gleam does have a formal code of conduct.

New comment by lpil in "The Gleam Programming Language"

lpil — Sat, 17 Jan 2026 12:11:12 +0000

Gleam is the same as SQLite, we have some community values on the website but the licence doesn’t exclude anyone from using the software.

New comment by lpil in "The Gleam Programming Language"

lpil — Wed, 14 Jan 2026 16:33:22 +0000

How you behave in community spaces is 100% related to the project.

I agree, that would be very silly. I don't think you can compare not tolerating racists to mandating a particular car colour.

New comment by lpil in "The Gleam Programming Language"

lpil — Wed, 14 Jan 2026 14:26:31 +0000

Sorry, I've been unclear.

The runtime behaviour and cost of calling an Erlang function is the same in Elixir and Gleam, however the syntax is more verbose in Gleam as it asks for type information, while in Elixir this is optional.

New comment by lpil in "The Gleam Programming Language"

lpil — Wed, 14 Jan 2026 12:30:22 +0000

All open source projects have a political agenda. That's the purpose of the licence, to force certain behaviour.

New comment by lpil in "The Gleam Programming Language"

lpil — Wed, 14 Jan 2026 11:16:33 +0000

In a world with package management there’s no practical difference between the core modules being in one package or multiple packages.

New comment by lpil in "The Gleam Programming Language"

lpil — Wed, 14 Jan 2026 11:15:09 +0000

All open source projects are political by their very nature.

New comment by lpil in "The Gleam Programming Language"

lpil — Wed, 14 Jan 2026 11:11:24 +0000

This is the same as Elixir, you need to specify what Erlang function to use in that language if you want to use Erlang code. The only difference is that Gleam has a more verbose syntax for it.

New comment by lpil in "The Gleam Programming Language"

lpil — Wed, 14 Jan 2026 11:09:52 +0000

You can use all the BEAM debuggers and tracing tools, and Gleam has a print debugging keyword.

Unfortunately there is not yet a plugin for the BEAM debuggers for them to use Gleam syntax.

New comment by lpil in "Databases in 2025: A Year in Review"

lpil — Mon, 05 Jan 2026 10:36:08 +0000

SQLite is likely the most widely used production database due to its widespread usage in desktop and mobile software, and SQLite databases being a Library of Congress "sustainable format".

New comment by lpil in "I tried Gleam for Advent of Code"

lpil — Sun, 14 Dec 2025 21:15:31 +0000

I presume they checked out Gleam years ago, or their investigation was more shallow.

That aside, it is normal in Elixir to use Erlang OTP directly. Neither Elixir nor Gleam provides an entirely alternative API for OTP. It is a strength that BEAM languages call each other, not a weakness.

New comment by lpil in "I tried Gleam for Advent of Code"

lpil — Sun, 14 Dec 2025 17:48:41 +0000

We've not had any proposals for a design like that. We are open to proposals though! I wrote a blog post detailing the process here: https://lpil.uk/blog/how-to-add-metaprogramming-to-gleam/

New comment by lpil in "I tried Gleam for Advent of Code"

lpil — Sun, 14 Dec 2025 15:57:25 +0000

OCaml's modules are not implicitly instantiated, so they provide the same DX and APIs as you would get in Gleam.

Elixir does have protocols, but they are extremely limited compared to type classes, traits, etc, and they're uncommonly used compared to writing concrete code.

New comment by lpil in "I tried Gleam for Advent of Code"

lpil — Sun, 14 Dec 2025 14:49:22 +0000

Thank you!

New comment by lpil in "I tried Gleam for Advent of Code"

lpil — Sun, 14 Dec 2025 14:49:04 +0000

Free software was started as a political movement by Stallman et al. Why would we stop now?

New comment by lpil in "I tried Gleam for Advent of Code"

lpil — Sun, 14 Dec 2025 09:03:55 +0000

There’s several options, depending on what you want. The most commonly used option is the language server.