Try Gleam

Gleam is presented as a friendly, statically typed functional language that compiles to the Erlang BEAM virtual machine or JavaScript, making it possible to share types between BEAM services and web applications. Its syntax and data types will feel familiar to Rust programmers, though Gleam uses immutable bindings, function pipes instead of methods, and Result values for errors. The language also offers a “use” pattern to simplify callback-heavy code and relies on tail-call optimization for efficient recursion. Algebraic data types help represent errors and ensure invalid states are harder to express. The central pitch is that Gleam combines approachable syntax and strong types with BEAM’s strengths in concurrent, resilient systems.

Examples show BEAM processes handling separate orders: an unlinked worker can crash without bringing down its parent or neighboring workers, while message passing lets a parent collect each worker’s success or failure. The first example uses a sleep as a rough way to keep the parent alive; the follow-up demonstrates receiving results explicitly. Gleam also inherits Erlang’s OTP tools for supervising and restarting actors, which the author compares to Kubernetes-style orchestration. In some systems, OTP could replace a cluster of separate services and duplicated APIs with actors inside one application, reducing operational complexity while retaining fault recovery. The piece encourages interested readers to try Gleam, especially Rust users, and points to its interactive tour as a quick introduction.