Elm Town

Hosted by Jared M. Smith

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May 2026

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A podcast about the people making and using the Elm language, and the things that they do.

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October 27, 20261 hr 25 min

Elm Town 91 – Culture, codegen and (web) components with Joe Thel

Joe Thel cares for web components (custom elements), elm-codegen, and a culture balancing boring & novel technologies. We wade into the 2025 AI waters, but walk out before we drown. Thanks to our sponsor, Logistically. Email: elmtown@logisticallyinc.com . Music by Jesse Moore. Edited by Jared M. Smith. Recording date: 2025.11.07 Guest Joe Thel Show notes [00:00:17] Disclaimer: AI & Publish Time [00:00:50] Sponsored by Logistically [00:01:11] Introducing Joe Thel Deepgram Dillon Kearns' elm-pages Elm Camp Magic Read Along podcast [00:12:01] Question from the Deepgram team: Pitching Elm [00:14:50] Web components Custom Elements (The Elm Guide) Web Components (MDN) Elm Radio [00:24:08] Question from Deepgram: Fun stories with animation joethel.com elm-canvas [00:29:29] Novelty budget "Choose Boring Technology" by Dan McKinley "Facilitating Technology Change Through Cultural Change" by Grant Maki (elm-conf 2018) [00:38:10] Artificial Intelligence Zed MDN Web Docs [00:55:17] elm-codegen: Rediscovering the feels of "compile-time", active vs. passive elm-codegen Serde "Solving the Boolean Identity Crisis" by Jeremy Fairbank (elm-conf 2017) [01:10:24] Question from Deepgram: Early design decisions elm-spa-example by Richard Feldman [01:15:32] Picks Joe's picks "Learning Parser Combinators With Rust" by Bodil Stokke Crafting Interpreters by Robert Nystrom X-Bows keyboard Jared's picks Kinesis Advantage Rondo for Strings and Pegs by Joe Thel Zenyatta Mondatta by The Police Vinyl records, in general

May 19, 20261 hr 52 min

Elm Town 90 – Wonder: Contorting yourself with Ari Schlesinger

Ari Schlesinger illuminates a unique path of social responsibility carved through the tech world, using feminism as a guide while bearing attacks, criticism, and contortion. That trail led Ari to ask how programming languages shape society and, eventually, to research Elm—the compiler, error messages, and community. Thanks to our sponsor, Logistically. Email: elmtown@logisticallyinc.com . Music by Jesse Moore. Edited by Toni Cañete. Recording date: 2025.06.06 Guest Ari Schlesinger Show notes [00:00:25] Sponsored by Logistically [00:02:27] Introduction (for real) University of Georgia Socially Responsible Tech Lab "A Case for Feminism in Programming Language Design" , co-authored with Felienne Hermans Addressing Computing's Discrimination Problem: A Framework for Anti-Discriminatory Computing by Ari Schlesinger Elm Town 88 – Wonder: Unconscious bias with Felienne Hermans [00:04:57] Origin story FemTechNet Alex Juhasz Programmed Visions: Software and Memory by Wendy Hui Kyong Chun [00:14:33] Why Did School Suck? [00:20:41] A little thing called Y Combinator and 4chan happened HASTAC (Cathy Davidson) "A Cyborg Manifesto" by Donna Haraway [00:30:43] Anti-discriminatory framework "Good intentions are not enough: how informatics interventions can worsen inequality" by Tiffany C. Veinot, Hannah Mitchell, and Jessica S. Ancker Good Inside by Dr. Becky Kennedy [00:43:00] Language shapes reality Sapir-Whorf hypothesis [00:49:22] Glaciology "Glaciers, gender, and science: A feminist glaciology framework for global environmental change research" by Mark Carey, M. Jackson, Alessandro Antonello, and Jaclyn Rushing [00:58:11] Relation of Ari's research to Elm Strange Loop Papers We Love Conf "The Hard Parts of Open Source" by Evan Czaplicki at Strange Loop 2018 Propaganda by Edward Bernays The Last Whole Earth Catalog [01:04:32] Elm error messages [01:20:36] Slackbot / Feminism bell hooks - Feminism is for Everybody [01:29:22] Why study Elm? "The Economics of Programming Languages" by Evan Czaplicki at Strange Loop 2023 [01:32:14] Contorting yourself "When We Have Never Been Human, What Is to Be Done?: Interview with Donna Haraway" by Nicholas Gane in Theory, Culture & Society The Good Place Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) [01:43:00] Picks Ari's picks Possible: How We Survive (and Thrive) in an Age of Conflict by William Ury Frieren: Beyond Journey's End (TV series) Programmed Visions: Software and Memory by Wendy Hui Kyong Chun Feminism Confronts Technology by Judy Wajcman TechnoFeminism by Judy Wajcman ACM TechBrief: Advancing Accessibility in the Digital World PBS / Sesame Street Taskmaster The Mushroom at the End of the World by Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing Jared's picks "Queer Theory for Lichens" (archive) by David Griffiths https://jayjinsing.github.io/files/QueerTheoryLichens.pdf (PDF) Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake The Rehearsal on Max by Nathan Fielder Deschooling Society by Ivan Illich

March 24, 20261 hr 0 min

Elm Town 89 – Elm Camp 2026

Elm Camp organizers Katja Mordaunt and Tomáš Látal share details about the June 15th-18th, 2026 event in Olomouc, Czech Republic, and extend an open invitation to Elm-curious folks in the broader community. Tickets on sale as of publishing! Thanks to our sponsor, Logistically. Email: elmtown@logisticallyinc.com . Music by Jesse Moore. Edited by Toni Cañete. Recording date: 2026.01.28 Guests Katja Mordaunt Tomáš Látal Show notes [00:00:33] Sponsored by Logistically [00:00:54] Introducing Katja Mordaunt & Tomáš Látal Elm Town 59 – Elm Camp with Katja Mordaunt Elm Town 78 – Elm Camp 2024 with Katja Mordaunt and Wolfgang Schuster Scrive [00:06:22] Elm Camp Info elm.camp [00:07:33] The town of Olomouc Elm Camp Discord [00:13:28] The venue: Park Hotel Prachárna Hotel Prachárna [00:19:50] Unconference format Elm Town 85 – Wander: Elm Camp 2025 [00:27:16] Intentionally Elm-curious Elm Town 81 – Inspired: Bubble Tea with Christian Rocha Lambda Days [00:34:16] The beauty of Elm Camp [00:39:41] Picks Katja's pick "Teaching Haskell to Kids" Tomáš' picks Coderetreat Darknet Diaries Kagi Small Web "The Small Web is Beautiful" by Ben Hoyt Jujutsu

December 16, 20251 hr 44 min

Elm Town 88 – Wonder: Unconscious bias with Felienne Hermans

Felienne Hermans relates her journey in programming—writing The Programmer's Brain , uncovering biases within computing culture & herself, and building the multilingual, gradual-syntax programming language Hedy. We even dip into AI (trigger warning) and dumb phones. Thanks to our sponsor, Logistically. Email: elmtown@logisticallyinc.com . Music by Jesse Moore. Edited by Toni Cañete. Recording date: 2025.04.08 Guest Felienne Hermans Show notes [00:00:26] Sponsored by Logistically [00:00:48] Introducing Felienne Hermans Hedy - Textual programming made easy The Programmer's Brain by Felienne Hermans "How to teach programming (and other things)?" at Strange Loop 2019 "A Case for Feminism in Programming Language Design" , co-authored with Ari Schlesinger Elm Town 59 – Elm Camp with Katja Mordaunt Code Reading Club The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman [00:04:09] The costs of misconceptions Science Mike [00:09:51] Journey to computer science [00:14:33] Programming culture: challenges and creativity Elm Town 48 – Making Little Games Like Presents with Martin Stewart Elm Town 64 – The network effect with Martin Stewart Advent of Code [00:21:36] Bias and building a multi-lingual programming language Mark Guzdial's blog: Computing Ed Research - Guzdial's Take [00:28:35] Hedy's gradual syntax Addressing Computing’s Discrimination Problem: A Framework for Anti-Discriminatory Computing by Ari Schlesinger The Will to Change by bell hooks [00:38:12] Programming language community, learning, and valuing hard things [00:47:19] How language design choices affect cognitive load "The Hard Parts of Open Source" by Evan Czaplicki at Strange Loop 2019 Elm Town 58 – Unblocking users with quality software with Tessa Kelly Episode 68: Elm and ADD with Dillon Kearns and Jeroen Engels [00:56:22] History of women in computing "Female Inventors and Narratives of Innovation in Late Twentieth-Century Computing" by Myra Cheng Nathan Ensmenger [01:03:40] Kotodama (言霊): What's in a name? Feeling of Computing 75 • A Case for Feminism in Programming Language Design by Felienne Hermans [01:08:49] Switching to a dumb phone [01:16:48] AI "An Age of Hyperabundance" by Laura Preston In Praise of Messy Lives by Katie Roiphe [01:30:10] Picks Felienne's picks "An Age of Hyperabundance" by Laura Preston Death Glitch: How Techno-Solutionism Fails Us in This Life and Beyond by Tamara Kneese Crisis of Narration by Byung-Chul Han Jared's pick The End of This Day's Business by Katharine Burdekin

September 23, 202548 min

Elm Town 87 – Wonder: From machine to mob learning with Sophie Collard

Sophie Collard describes her transition from environmental engineering to software, mob programming to teach functional concepts, and building a startup app with Elm. Thanks to our sponsor, Logistically. Email: elmtown@logisticallyinc.com . Music by Jesse Moore. Recording date: 2025.02.24 Guest Sophie Collard Show notes [00:00:29] Sponsored by Logistically [00:00:50] Introducing Sophie London Air UI using Elm & Leafletjs "Lessons learnt from writing 10k LOC in Elm" at Lambda Days 2024 sophiecollard/jsonpath [00:01:33] Journey to programming [00:10:35] Learning Elm [00:14:30] Questions from Monica McGuigan on learning [00:17:41] Mob programming Mobster by Dillon Kearns Zed channels for collaboration [00:23:47] London Air UI Custom elements (Elm Guide chapter) [00:27:48] Railpackers Railpackers xkcd: Standards [00:33:51] The Jackson guitar project (Chushin Gakki) Chushin Gakki Jacksons Directory ( GitHub ) elm-pages Elm Town [00:41:41] sophiecollard/jsonpath [00:44:51] Picks Sophie's picks Elm in Action by Richard Feldman Programming Elm by Jeremy Fairbank Jared's pick Future of Coding (a.k.a. Feeling of Comput(er)ing)

September 2, 202556 min

Elm Town 86 – Wonder: Linking notes for active growth with Joël Quenneville

Joël Quenneville conveys his growth process—taking notes, creating connections between ideas, and sharing those artifacts. Thanks to our sponsor, Logistically. Email: elmtown@logisticallyinc.com . Music by Jesse Moore. Recording date: 2025.01.30 Guest Joël Quenneville Show notes [00:00:19] Sponsored by Logistically [00:00:39] Introducing Joël Some blog posts by Joël "Structuring Conditionals in a Wizard" "The Mechanics of Maybe" "Problem Solving with Maybe" Sample Joël podcast appearances Elm Radio 32 - "Elm's Universal Pattern" Elm Radio 52 - "Category Theory in Elm with Joël Quenneville" SW Unscripted - "Conditional Cardinality with Joël Quenneville" Some of Joël's conference talks "Rolling Random Romans" at elm-conf 2016 "A Number by Any Other Name" at Elm in the Spring 2019 "Inverting a binary tree with 1 line of Elm" from an Elm Online meetup in 2021 [00:01:51] Getting started crafting software [00:09:37] Discovering Elm [00:11:50] JSON Decoders, and then... Reasoning by Analogy by Joël Quenneville Getting Unstuck with Elm JSON Decoders by Joël Quenneville Elm’s Universal Pattern by Joël Quenneville [00:23:57] Inspiration, artifacts, and note-taking Learning by helping out in the Elm Slack by Joël Quenneville My Note Taking System Gives Me Constant Ideas by Joël Quenneville Obsidian The Notecard System: The Key For Remembering, Organizing And Using Everything You Read by Ryan Holiday Gingko Writer [00:39:11] Active versus passive growth Turning experience into growth by Joël Quenneville [00:49:47] Collect mental models and heuristics Triangle of Separation by Joël Quenneville Elm Town 76 – Between the paving stones with Andrew Lenards Andrew's Arboriculture zine No. 001 – Joël's Triangle [00:54:18] Picks Joël's pick How To Take Smart Notes by Sönke Ahrens Jared's pick Jesse Welles

July 22, 20251 hr 0 min

Elm Town 85 – Wander: Elm Camp 2025

In a short break from the Wonder series, John Pavlick, Wolfgang Schuster, and Tristan Pendergrass join Jared to report on the Elm Camp 2025 unconference experience in Michigan, USA. Thanks to our sponsor, Logistically. Email: elmtown@logisticallyinc.com . Music by Jesse Moore. Recording date: 2025.07.07 Guests John Pavlick Wolfgang Schuster Tristan Pendergrass Show notes [00:00:14] Sponsored by Logistically [00:00:35] Elm Camp sponsors NoRedInk Concentric [00:01:09] Introductions Tony Bradley @abradley2 (GitHub) Tony Bradley's elm-i18next-gen [00:06:27] Setting the scene elm.camp Ronora Lodge & Retreat Center [00:13:15] Unconference format Feedback.one [00:26:48] Sessions Elm Town 81 – Inspired: Bubble Tea with Christian Rocha Wolfgang's blog series on Elm virtual DOMs Bring Your Own DOM – Part 1 – Portals Bring Your Own DOM – Part 2 – TUIs Wolfgang's elm-ink (GitHub) repo elm-tooling/elm-language-server initially by Kolja (@razze) Elm - Community Elmcraft - Community Elm Land Lamdera Simon Lydell's elm-safe-virtual-dom React DOM issue - Dan Abramov's link to Chromium issue & hack [00:52:27] Picks John's picks John's jmpavlick/q Zokka Michigan Wolfgang's picks Summer Games Done Quick The Last Phi Hunter Richard Feldman's course on Frontend Masters Write a Compiler That Understands Types Tristan's pick Vantage Jared's picks Parks (1st edition) Elmcraft.org

June 3, 202555 min

Elm Town 84 – Wonder: Elm all the way down with Justin Lubin

Justin Lubin sketches his journey from undergrad research at UChicago with Ravi Chugh on output-directed and bidirectional programming environments (Sketch-n-Sketch) to graduate work at UC Berkeley with Sarah E. Chasins, focusing on programming language theory, researching how statically-typed functional programmers write code, and beyond, to helping domain experts. Thanks to our sponsor, Logistically. Email: elmtown@logisticallyinc.com . Music by Jesse Moore. Recording date: 2024.12.09 Guest Justin Lubin Show notes [00:00:44] Introducing Justin Sketch-n-Sketch "How statically-typed functional programmers write code" by Justin Lubin and Sarah E. Chasins [00:07:07] Elm all the way down [00:08:36] What is Sketch-n-Sketch? Hazel [00:11:03] From Parker Ziegler: Getting started in a large Elm codebase [00:13:01] The Sketch-n-Sketch cinematic universe Maniposynth [00:22:21] Research on how statically-typed functional programmers write code Elm Town 83 – Wonder: Meeting people where they are with Ryan Haskell [00:35:11] From Parker Ziegler: Ergonomics vs. hindrances [00:40:25] Fork of the Elm compiler ravichugh/sketch-n-sketch (GitHub) [00:45:04] Cobbler "Equivalence by Canonicalization for Synthesis-Backed Refactoring" by Justin Lubin, Jeremy Ferguson, Kevin Ye, Jacob Yim, and Sarah E. Chasins Cobbler (GitHub) [00:47:36] Justin's current work [00:51:45] Picks Justin's pick Design at Work: Cooperative Design of Computer Systems by Joan Greenbaum and Morten Kyng Jared's pick Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake

April 15, 202544 min

Elm Town 83 – Wonder: Meeting people where they are with Ryan Haskell

Kicking off the Wonder series, Ryan Haskell shares his approach to teaching Elm, his gap year adventures, and his current work at Brilliant. He gives insights into creating accessible learning materials, building games, and finding inspiration outside the Elm ecosystem. Thanks to our sponsor, Logistically. Email: elmtown@logisticallyinc.com . Music by Jesse Moore. Edited by Toni Cañete. Recording date: 2024.11.27 Guest Ryan Haskell Show notes [00:00:21] Sponsored by Logistically [00:00:43] Introduction ryan.town Welcome to Elm! YouTube series Elm Town 62 – The Map to Elm Land Elm Land ryan-haskell/date-format [00:01:34] Gap Year [00:03:31] Building a game in Godot Turbo Champ [00:11:01] Welcome to Elm YouTube Series Richard Feldman's "Teaching Elm to Beginners" (elm-conf 2017) [00:17:06] Teaching style "Parentheses are like hugs" - from Section 1.5 Advanced Functions [00:24:52] From Wolfgang: Finding inspiration Inspiration for Vendr's elm-gql from watching Ben Awad's videos [00:29:07] Remaking Ryan's website [00:32:41] Working at Brilliant Brilliant Elm Town 57 – Brilliant ways to use Elm with Aaron Strick Red Blob Games [00:39:15] Picks Ryan's picks Dracula by Bram Stoker The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde Vite 6.0 The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (N64) Horizon Zero Dawn Satisfactory Jared's picks Satisfactory Night Fever by Dan Bull Richard Feldman's "Teaching Elm to Beginners" (elm-conf 2017) Frontend Masters Elm courses by Richard Feldman Introduction to Elm, v2 Advanced Elm Elm in Action by Richard Feldman (Manning) Welcome to Elm! YouTube series

December 17, 20241 hr 20 min

Elm Town 82 – Inspired: Tools with Dillon and Jeroen

In the final episode of the Inspired series, Dillon Kearns and Jeroen Engels wax philosophically with Jared about what it means to be inspired by Elm within the context of tools. We chat about feedback, guarantees, and contracts as lenses for building tools. Thanks to our sponsor, Logistically. Email: elmtown@logisticallyinc.com . Music by Jesse Moore. Edited by Toni Cañete. Recording date: 2024.08.29 Guests Jeroen Engels Dillon Kearns Show notes [00:00:50] Sponsored by Logistically [00:01:14] Introduction Elm Radio Elm Town 61 – Turning the pages Elm Town 65 – Let's roll with it Elm Town 79 – Inspired: Gleam with Hayleigh Elm Town 80 – Inspired: Roc with Richard Feldman Elm Town 81 – Inspired: Bubble Tea with Christian Rocha [00:02:20] What does it mean to be inspired by Elm? [00:05:53] Elm philosophy Evan's "Elm philosophy" thread elm-review elm-pages [00:25:44] Simplicity is not just for beginners [00:32:38] What are tools? [00:33:56] Feedback & guarantees [00:39:26] Tool as contract (not slicing hot dogs nor fingers) [00:45:18] Lobbying for tool as contract Hayleigh's elm-web-audio [00:48:09] Tool as an expression of a point of view Dillon's elm-graphql [00:50:37] Roc Roc [00:53:04] Contracts & purity Lamdera Matthew Griffith's elm-ui [01:08:09] What's next for Elm? [01:13:38] Picks Jeroen's picks Elm Camp Save the Earth 🌍 Elm Radio Dillon's picks Be kind ❤ elm-pages scripts Jared's picks elm-pages scripts spinners Pages.Script.Spinner Alex Korban's Elm Catalog