Nice folx finish first

My first day at the Recurse Center was cash a lot of the checks that the application process had been signing. Everyone seems very friendly, very interested in both work and play, and overall good vibes. Staff is helpful and thoughtful about onboarding, and I went to sleep last night excited for the next days of this adventure.

One question I was asked during some meet & greets yesterday was "why Gleam?" I thought I might answer that here.

Gleam's website introduces a promise that is instantly appealing.

I am a type guy by nurture, not nature. Because of some incredible mentors I've been able to work with, I am a big fan of strongly typed languages and type-based design. When reading about a new language, I tend to zone out if I learn that it is dynamically typed. Swift, my primary language, has a lovely type system until it is pushed to its limits, but that speaks to its power.

Scaling is something I have only worried about in professional settings, as most of my personal projects have a unipolar and by nature small audience. Gleam does not have (much?) industry buy-in that I know of, but it is still a young language. Maybe some day...

But that first promise is the most attractive part: Gleam is friendly. I have interacted with and lurked behind the scenes of the Gleam community and it really is gosh-darned friendly. Everyone is so kind and eager to help, the community rules seem descriptive more than anything. Thought not explicitly linked, there is definitely spiritual connection between the Gleam community and Recurse Center social rules. I love that. That is the kind of community I would like to be in.

I was promised very little time to actually code the first day and I am proud to say I delivered. I spent a little time solving exercises on the Gleam Exercism track, which is a fun way of building intuition for the language, and interacted with my mentor a little bit. Needless to say he is really really nice!