Episodes

  • Elm Town 90 – Wonder: Contorting yourself with Ari Schlesinger

    Elm Town 90 – Wonder: Contorting yourself with Ari Schlesinger
    May 19 2026
    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 GeorgiaSocially Responsible Tech Lab"A Case for Feminism in Programming Language Design", co-authored with Felienne HermansAddressing Computing's Discrimination Problem: A Framework for Anti-Discriminatory Computing by Ari SchlesingerElm Town 88 – Wonder: Unconscious bias with Felienne Hermans [00:04:57] Origin story FemTechNetAlex JuhaszProgrammed 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. AnckerGood 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 LoopPapers We Love Conf"The Hard Parts of Open Source" by Evan Czaplicki at Strange Loop 2018Propaganda by Edward BernaysThe 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 & SocietyThe Good PlaceWeb Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) [01:43:00] Picks Ari's picks Possible: How We Survive (and Thrive) in an Age of Conflict by William UryFrieren: Beyond Journey's End (TV series)Programmed Visions: Software and Memory by Wendy Hui Kyong ChunFeminism Confronts Technology by Judy WajcmanTechnoFeminism by Judy WajcmanACM TechBrief: Advancing Accessibility in the Digital WorldPBS / Sesame StreetTaskmasterThe 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 SheldrakeThe Rehearsal on Max by Nathan FielderDeschooling Society by Ivan Illich
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    1 hr and 53 mins
  • Elm Town 89 – Elm Camp 2026

    Elm Town 89 – Elm Camp 2026
    Mar 24 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
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    1 hr and 1 min
  • Elm Town 88 – Wonder: Unconscious bias with Felienne Hermans

    Elm Town 88 – Wonder: Unconscious bias with Felienne Hermans
    Dec 16 2025
    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: 2025.04.08GuestFelienne HermansShow notes[00:00:26] Sponsored by Logistically[00:00:48] Introducing Felienne HermansHedy - Textual programming made easyThe 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 SchlesingerElm Town 59 – Elm Camp with Katja MordauntCode Reading ClubThe Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman[00:04:09] The costs of misconceptionsScience Mike[00:09:51] Journey to computer science[00:14:33] Programming culture: challenges and creativityElm Town 48 – Making Little Games Like Presents with Martin StewartElm Town 64 – The network effect with Martin StewartAdvent of Code[00:21:36] Bias and building a multi-lingual programming languageMark Guzdial's blog: Computing Ed Research - Guzdial's Take[00:28:35] Hedy's gradual syntaxAddressing Computing’s Discrimination Problem: A Framework for Anti-Discriminatory Computing by Ari SchlesingerThe 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 2019Elm Town 58 – Unblocking users with quality software with Tessa KellyEpisode 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 ChengNathan 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 PrestonIn Praise of Messy Lives by Katie Roiphe[01:30:10] PicksFelienne's picks"An Age of Hyperabundance" by Laura PrestonDeath Glitch: How Techno-Solutionism Fails Us in This Life and Beyond by Tamara KneeseCrisis of Narration by Byung-Chul HanJared's pickThe End of This Day's Business by Katharine Burdekin
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    1 hr and 45 mins
  • Elm Town 87 – Wonder: From machine to mob learning with Sophie Collard

    Elm Town 87 – Wonder: From machine to mob learning with Sophie Collard
    Sep 23 2025

    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] PicksSophie'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)
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    49 mins
  • Elm Town 86 – Wonder: Linking notes for active growth with Joël Quenneville

    Elm Town 86 – Wonder: Linking notes for active growth with Joël Quenneville
    Sep 2 2025

    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] PicksJoël's pick
    • How To Take Smart Notes by Sönke Ahrens
    Jared's pick
    • Jesse Welles
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    56 mins
  • Elm Town 85 – Wander: Elm Camp 2025

    Elm Town 85 – Wander: Elm Camp 2025
    Jul 22 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] PicksJohn's picks
    • <| ("left pizza")
    • << ("left compose")
    • 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
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    1 hr and 1 min
  • Elm Town 84 – Wonder: Elm all the way down with Justin Lubin

    Elm Town 84 – Wonder: Elm all the way down with Justin Lubin
    Jun 3 2025

    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] PicksJustin's pick
    • Design at Work: Cooperative Design of Computer Systems by Joan Greenbaum and Morten Kyng
    Jared's pick
    • Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake
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    56 mins
  • Elm Town 83 – Wonder: Meeting people where they are with Ryan Haskell

    Elm Town 83 – Wonder: Meeting people where they are with Ryan Haskell
    Apr 15 2025

    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] PicksRyan'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
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    44 mins