alt Hacker NewsSo, you started by making a pointed comment about that the language has no string interpolation when it's ostensibly for building UIs, so I'm not sure why you're surprised you're getting responses like mine or the one from lpil. Gleam is not ostensibly meant for building UIs just because it targets JS, and while you don't get string interpolation in the way you might get in other languages you can go pretty far with the <> syntax.
To answer your question about why you would use Gleam when you're running code in a JS engine, it's the same about any language that compiles down to another, such as Clojure, and you can take your pick of those reasons: preference, syntax, pragmatism, etc. I'm not sure what kind of answer you're looking for beyond that.
I'm looking for the intention behind it. They chose two compilation targets. That made things harder. They had a reason. That's what I'm asking about.
None of your reasons ("preference, syntax, pragmatism") fully explain the situation without more context. Whose preference? What syntax are users even seeing? Why is it pragmatic?
Compilation targets are generally chosen based on performance characteristics and where the code is actually expected to be run. If you're not expecting the code to run on the client, then there's no reason to use JavaScript. V8 performance is better when single-threaded, but then why use the actor model?
When I go to the ClojureScript website, they have a whole section about why they chose JavaScript as a compilation target[0]. Notably, it mentions the word "client" multiple times.
[0] https://clojurescript.org/about/rationale