It's a language that runs on top of Erlang VM (called BEAM), similar how Clojure or Scala reuse Java VM. There are other languages that use Erlang VM, like Elixir or LFE.
Gleam is interesting because it's the first statically typed language for Erlang VM, other languages for it can have gradual typing and type hints (TypeScript-style), but under the hood they are still dynamic.
The team behind it cares about adoption so they try to do many things around the language right: they have a compiler, a package manager, a code formatter, an LSP server. So, while the developer experience may seem somewhat rough you still get a feeling of maturity. Gleam doesn't feel like someone's experiment or a toy, but rather like a language that will be around and actively developed for decades.
Gleam is interesting because it's the first statically typed language for Erlang VM, other languages for it can have gradual typing and type hints (TypeScript-style), but under the hood they are still dynamic.
The team behind it cares about adoption so they try to do many things around the language right: they have a compiler, a package manager, a code formatter, an LSP server. So, while the developer experience may seem somewhat rough you still get a feeling of maturity. Gleam doesn't feel like someone's experiment or a toy, but rather like a language that will be around and actively developed for decades.