On: Gleam: A Basic Introduction

[Ndymium]

But, you need a runtime. If Gleam had its own runtime, that would be another layer in a similar vein. Here Gleam is using Erlang (or a JS runtime) which is bound to be more supported and have a longer lifetime than something they cooked up themselves.

Besides, Gleam's original aim was basically "Erlang but static types", so the choice of Erlang as runtime was always there.