Is Elm dead?

No.

Elm’s release cycle is (very) slow on purpose. As Elm’s creator Evan Czaplicki wrote in February 2021: “If you like what you see now, that's pretty much what Elm is going to be for a while.” His latest talk at Strange Loop 2023, “The Economics of Programming Languages”, provides insights into his current work, following his update from November 2021 and his GOTO Aarhus 2023 talk “Elm on the Backend” (video unreleased).

While the language doesn’t get frequent updates (and that’s a good thing!), the community is more active than ever. Have a look at recent package updates, where a lot of work is happening. The Elm Weekly newsletter, the Elm Radio & Elm Town podcasts, and Elmcraft are great resources for getting a feel for what’s going on in the Elm world. Discourse and Slack are the main places where the community gathers online. In the real world, after conferences were stopped by the global pandemic, Elm Camp happened for the first time in 2023 in Denmark, and is planned for 2024 in the UK.

Why is it a good thing that Elm doesn’t get frequent updates? First of all, it means your code will last a long time! It also means the language is very stable, because features are carefully thought out before being implemented.