First and foremost it was so nice to be able to meet so many people in person that I’ve known online for years. The most important part of Elm for me is the community and being able to experience it in person was truly special.
Venue
The venue was also incredible. I’ve never stayed anywhere quite like it before, and don’t imagine I will again anytime soon.
The grounds of the place were incredibly well maintained too, with fire pits, picnic tables, a robot lawn mower, and more.
I especially loved the forested areas as they reminded of where I grew up.
Sessions
There were many sessions and even more chats happening between and during. There were almost always 2 or more I wanted to be a part of. The ones I was able to attend were: Next 5 years for Elm, Elm in Business, Reflecting on the Last Few Years, Games with Elm (I hosted/led this conversation), elm-dev, Elm for Beautiful Art & Music, Getting an Elm Certification, Funding Elm, Let’s Play Games, Internationalizing Elm, Forms, and The Making of Elm Camp. I’ll try and reflect, in no particular order, on what I remember, as I know there was a lot I’ve forgotten.
Games with Elm
I hosted the Games with Elm session, partly because there was a fair amount of interest in having one and because I’ve spent the past 2 years slowly working on a game engine. I don’t have a lot to show at the moment as I’m in the middle of a very large refactor, but I think I’m getting close to something minimal. I’m also in the midst of moving houses so that may delay my refactor a tad.
elm-dev
This for me wasn’t particularly enlightening because I’ve already contributed a tad to the project. I am very excited to see it released though, and it was fun to hear the conversation.
Internationalizing Elm
I’m quite interested in the future of this work. It’s slightly inspired by Felienne Hermans’ Hedy programming language, which I’m a huge fan of. I’m also excited because I feel like it aligns so well with the ideals of Elm.
Elm for Beautiful Art & Music
This was my favorite of the sessions. I’d never seen Casper’s work before, and I really love personal art. I also really like art that’s ephemeral, and his work kinda hit all those sweet spots.
Getting an Elm Certification
This was an interesting one for me. I don’t have any certifications of any sort, I don’t even have any degrees beyond my high school diploma. I also realize that companies like to have these sorts of things. I know I’ve lost job opportunities because I don’t have a degree, despite having all of the necessary skills and experience. If providing people certificates of some sort could help them to get a job then I’m all for it.
Reflecting on the Last Few Years
This was the only one of the non-Elm and non-technical sessions I attended. It was, as the title says, about reflecting on the past few years. I won’t share what anyone else shared with me. I won’t share a lot about my time beyond it being challenging in ways far beyond covid.
The Making of Elm Camp
This session felt relatively straight forward but it was still fun to hear from Katja and Mario. It also has me hopeful for future Elm Camps all around the world.
Elm in Business
This is one of the ones I remember the least at this time. Was happy to participate though as I enjoy using Elm for work and find it a highly appropriate tool for building things with code.
Forms
This was all about building forms in Elm. I once spent a year building highly complex forms in React and don’t want to repeat the coding experience, the team was great though! It definitely has shaped my view on forms in any language or framework being more of a complex and custom creation than most people appreciate.
Let’s Play Games
We spent a half-hour playing games that we and others had created. It was a lot of fun! By far I think the biggest hit of the session was Unblank by Ryan Haskell-Glatz.
Funding Elm
Not entirely sure what to say about this session. I think my 1 take away is that it’s challenging to have a world full of people who buy yachts, people who never want a yacht, and a variety of gray in between.
Next 5 years for Elm
One of the requirements for building a tall building is having a solid foundation. The taller the building, the more solid of a foundation necessary. Well I love mega structures. Were I a structural engineer, I’d want to be building the longest bridges and the tallest towers. But I’m a software engineer. Which means I want to write software that is the lowest maintenance burden, the easiest to refactor, and feels invisible to the user. If today I’m building 50 story skyscrapers in Elm with ease, in 5 years I expect to be building 500 space scrapers with ease.
Heading Home
As much as I loved Elm Camp, all things must end. I didn’t head home right away though. Bekah and I ended up spending an extra few days enjoying Denmark in all its beauty. But that’s another story.
Wolfgang's Musings 