Why I’m Excited About Gleam

Why I’m Excited About Gleam

The Gleam Programming is a statically typed, functional programming language designed for simplicity and concurrency. Pretty neat, and they got a cool mascot.

Written by Vincent Buchner | Apr 25, 2025

Last Updated at April 25, 2025

Gleam Programming

I’ll be short about this one, I have recently learned about the Gleam programming language, and honestly? It’s sleek, well-documented, and has a “baby Elm meets Elixir” vibe to it, and I mean that in the best way possible.

If you’re unaware: Gleam is a statically typed, functional programming language that compiles to Erlang and JavaScript. It boasts minimal syntax, a very friendly compiler, and runs on the BEAM (Erlang VM), so you get fault-tolerant, highly concurrent systems for free.


Why Gleam?

I’ve worked with statically typed languages like Rust and TypeScript, and dynamic ones like Python and JavaScript, but Gleam is. different. In a good way. Clarity is prioritized over cleverness here. Errors are readable. Types are enforced. Pattern matching is expressive. You write what you mean, and it just works.

It’s also community-friendly. Gleam error messages are akin to Rust’s, extremely helpful. That is beginner-friendly even though it’s a functional language. The compiler will often tell you as to why something crashed and how to fix it.


What It’s Good For

  • • Concurrency. Runs on the BEAM. That’s the same runtime that powers Elixir and Erlang, systems written for messaging, real-time systems, and distributed computation.

  • • Maintainability. Strongly typed, small syntax, clear rules. You don’t get lost in “what is this function again doing?” in five weeks’ time.

  • • Learning Functional Programming. If you’ve had a taste of Elm, Haskell, or OCaml and want a fun project that compiles and runs on solid infrastructure, this is the next step.

  • • Deployable JS. Early days yet, but Gleam can indeed compile to JavaScript, so it’s possible the language may move into full-stack territory someday.


Final Thoughts

Gleam is not likely to replace Python or TypeScript in your tech stack tomorrow, nor is it intended to. The point is: you can have solid, well-typed, highly concurrent code without the baggage. It gives you training wheels where you need them, and gets out of your way where you don’t. I’ll be watching this one closely as it evolves.

If you’re curious about functional languages, tired of runtime bugs, or just want to play with something that isn’t another JavaScript framework, give Gleam a spin. It’s small, opinionated, and better for it.



Resources

Getting Started:

Community:

Menu
Byte's Guide Logo Bytes Guide