Evan introduces himself and Elm, reflecting on his motivations for working on a programming language.

• Evan, the creator of Elm, talks about his journey starting as a student fascinated by programming languages.
• He compares the discovery of programming concepts to finding beautiful ideas hidden in a fog.
• Evan expresses an intrinsic motivation to uncover and understand the ideas behind programming languages.

Evan discusses the unexpected scope of work involved in language development and the support needed.

• Working on Elm, Evan realized the scope of language development includes infrastructure, releases, community engagement, and organizational tasks.
• He acknowledges the need for support beyond a single individual, citing examples of other languages with teams of engineers.
• Evan reflects on the necessity for funding and the different ways languages are supported, either by corporations or independent means.

Evan explores the funding models for programming languages and their impact on design and career risks.

• Evan categorizes language funding into corporate and independent models, detailing the design incentives and career risks of each.
• He elaborates on how corporate languages benefit from platforms and alliances, while independent ones rely on patronage, consulting, and grants.
• Evan highlights the significant financial flows into corporate languages, driving developer relations and affecting language evolution.

Evan explains the concept of traffic acquisition costs and their importance in the tech industry.

• Traffic acquisition costs refer to payments made by companies like Google to be the default search provider in browsers.
• Evan breaks down Google's financials, highlighting the large sums paid to companies like Apple and Mozilla for default search placement.
• He introduces the idea of 'internet landlord' economics, where companies like Google collect 'rent' for prime digital real estate.

Evan discusses the roles and expectations in developer relations and the open source community.

• Evan describes the various roles in developer relations, including evangelists, advocates, and community managers.
• He questions the narrative of the 'open source way', where contributions and community support are expected to be free.
• Evan emphasizes the need for a sustainable model that accounts for the cost of language development and community management.

Evan addresses the challenges and pressures faced by independent language authors.

• Independent language authors face the challenge of managing both language development and the associated business aspects without corporate backing.
• Evan shares his own experiences with the pressure to perform a wide range of tasks and the eventual realization of the need for additional support.
• He advocates for a clearer understanding of the economics behind programming languages to better support independent creators.

Evan concludes with reflections on his experience and open questions about the economics of programming languages.

• Evan reflects on his experiences and the insights gained regarding the economics of programming languages.
• He poses questions about the implications of the 'internet landlord' model and the potential solutions for small language authors.
• Evan encourages the audience to consider how economics shape language development and the support structures for different types of languages.