How to set up elm development environment

Elm is a language that compiles to JavaScript, or in other words, Elm is a language to generate functional JavaScript code.

This guide is talking about installing and setting up elm version 0.17.1

Why we need Elm?

Elm is a programming language for declaratively creating web browser-based graphical user interfaces. Elm is purely functional, and is developed with emphasis on usability, performance, and robustness. It advertises “no runtime exceptions in practice”, made possible by the Elm compiler’s static type checking.

Update 22, Oct 2016.

I came across Elm For Beginners amazing set of tutorials by James Moore, i would recommend watching it. Also his note on Development Environment Setup Steps

Features of Elm

1. JavaScript Interop
2. No Runtime Exceptions
3. Great Performance
4. Enforced Semantic Versioning

Read details.

1. Installing Elm Platform.

You can download the latest package from here.

OR

1. Mac Installer
2. Windows Installer
3. Anywhere npm or build from source

Configure Your Editor

Before you start you can play around with the online editor to get familiarized with the language.

1. Atom
2. Emacs
3. Sublime Text
4. Vim

Why should you consider using Elm?

Elm offers many benefits over JavaScript, which you’ll see in this course. Benefits such as:

• Zero Runtime Exceptions
• Simplified Debugging
• Easy Refactoring
• Helpful Type System & Compiler
• Improved Productivity
• Inherently testable code
• Enforced Semantic Versioning

Source

1. guide.elm-lang.org
2. elmcast.io
3. elm-lang.org

This article originally appeared on lightrains.com