tl;dr: Gleam v1.19.0 now compiles to Erlang abstract forms (a binary intermediate representation) instead of Erlang source code, bypassing the front-half of the Erlang compiler for significantly faster build times and accurate stack traces mapped to Gleam source. The team opted against targeting BEAM bytecode directly due to its unstable nature across VM versions, following the same approach as Elixir. The release also includes JavaScript codegen optimizations for pattern matching and list literals, better TypeScript interop, and language server improvements.