When someone is saying divisive things, I think it's important to be clear and precise about what they're actually saying. Some of the burden rests on themselves, and some of it rests on the commentators.
And so I think it's important to note here, that I don't think he said the "you shouldn't either" bit. He specifically denies saying it:
> I should also note “Your Mileage May Vary” etc. It would be entirely possible to use Elm and find it adequate for your needs, and therefore never bump into the things I hit very quickly.
What he actually said was, "I definitely cannot recommend it to anyone else." Which is fairly translated as, "You probably shouldn't either."
But he explicitly didn't say that it was inappropriate for anyone.
A good chunk of everything you hear and read revolves around people trying to get others to be like them and do as they do, implicitly so. (Another good chunk is made up of people justifying, explaining and defending themselves.)
This is not obvious to me. Why do you assume the motivation is "to help other users make the same decision" and not "to help other users make the decision that's right for them"? I promise you that some people have sometimes written with that motivation in mind. If any denial is taken as proof of guilt, how do you tell those people apart?
> Of course they can do that, but then they are not Elm users, which makes them off-topic to the question of what Elm users should do to move forward as Elm users.
The topic was someone saying in detail, "Here is why I have chosen not to be an Elm user, and why you shouldn't be either." Which means that the experience of people who are not committed to being Elm users is on topic.
> > requires a lot less energy and commitment.
> We don't actually know that for sure without looking at the size of someone's Elm code base.
Fair enough.
Of course in this case he says that he is walking away from an 8000 line project that can't upgrade to 0.19 because of the native code issue. So we know how much code he is talking about, and also know that a rewrite in a new language is simpler than trying to upgrade.
In this case maintaining a fork certainly exceeds the benefit of the project.
> Maybe some users also think that Elm is otherwise fantastic and want to stick with it.
I am sure that there are.
> For various reasons, changing tooling is not like changing what shampoo you use, except for some language-hopping butterflies who are experimenting with a new thing every week.
No, it is not.
However if you will have to make the change some day, then it is probably better to bite the bullet and accept the pain now rather than adding to it for a future date. And if the leadership problems described continues, it is clear that the Elm community is going to fall apart and any project in Elm will dead end.
Therefore if you are an established Elm user, you should be ready to accept that tooling change pain as a question of when, not if.