Hi @mmmrrr
Norm helped me gain confidence in the Elixir code I was writing, but it was a lot of extra work. I also introduced the Witchcraft Suite for Haskell-y “dark magic” for Maybe, semigroups and functors, finding ways to use it alongside Norm. My code got a lot more expressive but I also felt I was hitting the limits of my understanding of functional languages.
So I took a break studying Haskell for two months full-time before returning to Elm. And, after a year away from it, I returned a much stronger Elm programmer. Much of the data massaging I was doing in Elixir I’m now doing in a headless Elm REPL. I’m appreciating the static type checking and excellent type-safe libraries like elm-graphql.
I’ll probably return to Elixir in the coming weeks. I’m not sure if I’m ready yet to go full-Haskell on the backend and I still want to use Phoenix for Presence, OTP supervisors, etc. I’ll keep using Norm but I’ll be limiting the amount of data processing I’m doing in Elixir to be less dependent on it. Same for Witchcraft and it’s Haskell “fan-fiction”.
In summary, yes, I recommend Norm. I found it flexible, even in the library’s early days. I haven’t been following it’s development closely in recent months, so I’m curious to see how it’s matured. But the developer knows what he’s doing and judging from his podcasts is fully aware of Elixir’s strengths and weaknesses.
