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Gleam (programming language)
Programming language From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Gleam is a general-purpose, concurrent, functional, high-level programming language that compiles to Erlang or JavaScript source code.[2][7][8]
Gleam is a statically-typed language,[9] which is different from the most popular languages that run on Erlang’s virtual machine BEAM, Erlang and Elixir. Gleam has its own type-safe implementation of OTP, Erlang's actor framework.[10] Packages are provided using the Hex package manager, and an index for finding packages written for Gleam is available.[11]
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History
The first numbered version of Gleam was released on April 15, 2019.[12] Compiling to JavaScript was introduced with version v0.16.[13]
In 2023 the Erlang Ecosystem Foundation funded the creation of a course for learning Gleam on the learning platform Exercism.[14]
Version v1.0.0 was released on March 4, 2024.[15]
In April 2025, Thoughtworks added Gleam to its Technology Radar in the Assess ring (languages & frameworks worth exploring). [16]
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Adoption
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Gleam has seen some adoption in recent years.[17] According to a blog post, the language creators have placed strong emphasis on developer experience (DX), which has contributed to its appeal.[18][better source needed]
Although it compiles to run on the BEAM virtual machine, most new Gleam users do not have a background in Erlang nor Elixir, two older BEAM languages.[19] In 2025, Louis Pilfold reported on results from the 2024 developer survey, which received 841 responses.[19] Pilfold concluded that Gleam developers "overwhelmingly come from other ecosystems other than Erlang and Elixir".[19] The core team also reported on Gleam's efforts to expand the BEAM ecosystem in a keynote talk at Code BEAM Europe 2024.[20]
Developers have cited Gleam’s simplicity, static typing, and user-friendly tooling as reasons for adoption.[citation needed] The developer behind Nestful described their motivations for rewriting the project in Gleam as driven by its clarity and ease of use.[21] There is a community-maintained list of companies using Gleam in production.[22]
In 2025, Gleam appeared for the first time in the Stack Overflow Developer Survey, where it was the 2nd "most admired" language, with 70% of users currently using the language wanting to continue working with it.[17] 1.1% of developer respondents reported doing "extensive development work" in the language over the past year.[17]
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Features
Gleam includes the following features.[8][23]
- Result type for error handling
- Immutable objects
- Algebraic data types
- Pattern matching
- No null pointers
- No implicit type conversions
Example
A "Hello, World!" example:
import gleam/io
pub fn main() {
io.println("hello, world!")
}
Gleam supports tail call optimization:[24]
pub fn factorial(x: Int) -> Int {
// The public function calls the private tail recursive function
factorial_loop(x, 1)
}
fn factorial_loop(x: Int, accumulator: Int) -> Int {
case x {
1 -> accumulator
// The last thing this function does is call itself
_ -> factorial_loop(x - 1, accumulator * x)
}
}
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Implementation
Gleam's toolchain is implemented in the Rust programming language.[25] The toolchain is a single native binary executable which contains the compiler, build tool, package manager, source code formatter, and language server.[citation needed] A WebAssembly binary containing the Gleam compiler is also available, enabling Gleam code to be compiled within a web browser.[citation needed]
References
External links
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