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Show HN: “Nim in Action” is now available

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Re: Show HN: “Nim in Action” is now available

#61

Post by Ygg2 »

gokr wrote: post #26
Ygg2 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And before pcwalton drops in with his endless spamming about Nim not being safe, Nim being undefined Well, it is, isn't it? Is he wrong about Nim not being safe when not using Boehm GC? Does it not segfault when sending GC pointers between threads? He only jumps in, when someone claims Nim is safe or the sweet spot, or something equally wrong. Nim's pretty syntax comes with a price, just like Rust's safety comes wi…

About safe/undefined etc I think it has been answered before (there are probably more places): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9643690 Personally I am quite sick and tired of that particular "take" on Nim - why not for once criticize other parts of the language? :)

As far as I see the answers was: work-in-progress

And you asked why this happens, and I answered, because Nim claims it is secure. Not more not less.

It's like saying OpenSSL is perfectly (or as good as it gets) secure, and there aren't any known vulnerabilities. That statement is going to get a strong reaction from anyone that specializes in security and reads HN (for example tpatcek).

I don't like or dislike Nim. I did like Nim's macro system, although I fear its too powerful (it seems like macros would be really easy solution in many cases).

Re: Show HN: “Nim in Action” is now available

#62

Post by gokr »

pcwalton wrote: post #55
gokr wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

About safe/undefined etc I think it has been answered before (there are probably more places): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9643690 Personally I am quite sick and tired of that particular "take" on Nim - why not for once criticize other parts of the language? :)

> Personally I am quite sick and tired of that particular "take" on Nim - why not for once criticize other parts of the language? :) Because I'm not interested in criticizing languages as a whole—that would be language warring for no reason. Claims of memory safety are what are important to me, just as, for example, claims of correct crypto constructions are important to crypto people. Anyway, I see no reason to go f…

Great! Thing is, Rust and Nim are very different. Just as I wouldn't put Rust down for not having GC (I love languages moving the art forward) I just wish we could look at Nim as a language with different design goals than Rust. I know several things in Nim worth discussing, it doesn't have to be warring.

Re: Show HN: “Nim in Action” is now available

#63

Post by dom96 »

3pt14159 wrote: post #38
dom96 wrote: post #2

Author here! Even if you don't intend to purchase the book I would love to hear feedback from you about the first chapter (which is free!)[1]. Really excited about this book and am looking forward to any feedback at all from the HN community. 1 - https://manning-content.s3.amazonaws.com/download/6/df42fc6-...

First chapter is good. It introduces the main concepts gently. I would have mentioned compile times, since it is one of the main draws to Go, but other than that I think the first chapter is good. Even though I write Nim code, I still bought the book, but more so for the later chapters: 8. INTERFACING WITH OTHER LANGUAGES 9. METAPROGRAMMING 10. DIRECT HARDWARE CONTROL Since I don't have very much experience there. Al…

Thank you for reading and posting feedback!

I think you're right, Nim compile times are fast and deserve to be mentioned. Will make a note to add this.

Debugging will be a part of Chapter 5. But I will make a note about addressing people coming from Python and Ruby.

Thanks again!

Re: Show HN: “Nim in Action” is now available

#64

Post by dom96 »

steveklabnik wrote: post #29
dom96 wrote: post #2

Author here! Even if you don't intend to purchase the book I would love to hear feedback from you about the first chapter (which is free!)[1]. Really excited about this book and am looking forward to any feedback at all from the HN community. 1 - https://manning-content.s3.amazonaws.com/download/6/df42fc6-...

Seems good! One small note, since I know that this book is getting started: Rust does have some amount of CTFE available in nightly (const fn), and it and/or compiler plugins may very well be stable by the time this book is released. So you might want to make a note to double-check the state of that when you're closer to a final draft. Congrats and good luck! Writing a book is so rewarding, but so draining.

Thank you for taking a look!

I will certainly keep my eye on that and update my table appropriately :)

Re: Show HN: “Nim in Action” is now available

#65

Post by dom96 »

gokr wrote: post #7
dom96 wrote: post #2

Author here! Even if you don't intend to purchase the book I would love to hear feedback from you about the first chapter (which is free!)[1]. Really excited about this book and am looking forward to any feedback at all from the HN community. 1 - https://manning-content.s3.amazonaws.com/download/6/df42fc6-...

Great work man! I will get one for sure.

Thanks man! :)

Re: Show HN: “Nim in Action” is now available

#66

Post by dom96 »

systems wrote: post #53
dom96 wrote: post #2

Author here! Even if you don't intend to purchase the book I would love to hear feedback from you about the first chapter (which is free!)[1]. Really excited about this book and am looking forward to any feedback at all from the HN community. 1 - https://manning-content.s3.amazonaws.com/download/6/df42fc6-...

well, i dont know if nim have a free book yet, but i would suggest making the ebook free this will encourage students and casuals to look into nim

I would love to, but unfortunately I have signed a contract with Manning so I can't just release it for free. Once the book goes out of print it will likely become free though.

Re: Show HN: “Nim in Action” is now available

#67

Post by gokr »

doboo wrote: post #19

Could be of interest if the creator didn't self-promote the language through an aggressive tone "after a few beers" https://hero.handmadedev.org/forum/code-discussion/937-i-wou...

The creator? I may be daft but that is someone saying he/she has been using Nim for one year?

Re: Show HN: “Nim in Action” is now available

#68

Post by SeanDav »

AsyncAwait wrote: post #58
dom96 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for the kind words! I'm happy that you can see the positives in Nim even though you dislike one of its most prominent features. Personally I love significant whitespace and have started using Nim because of this feature, basically back in the day I just wanted a Python alternative that was compiled. If you really dislike it that much, you may be able to convince Araq to bring back his old time idea of allow…

Appreciate you responding so quickly! I certainly understand the appeal of whitespace if you're coming from Python or Haskell etc. just wanted to point out that it might not be for everybody. As for the web development focus, I would certainly understand not wanting to discuss topics in the book that you yourself are not that confident about. Good luck with Nim going forward.

I put off developing in Python for ages because I dislike significant whitespace. Eventually I was persuaded to give it a go. After developing in Python for some time now, I still dislike significant whitespace and the whole tab-space issue, but can learn to live with it.

I will likely give Nim a go, despite its significant whitespace and weird variable naming rules. In any case I continue to follow Nim and wish the project every success.

Re: Show HN: “Nim in Action” is now available

#70

Post by eaurouge »

dom96 wrote: post #15
AsyncAwait wrote: post #8

Great to see Nim getting an official book, (Dominick is almost like a co-author of Nim at this point :-). My impression of Nim is that it is what Go should have been, if language developments of the past 40 years were taken into account, so if you like the simplicity of Go's syntax, but want modern features, seriously consider Nim. I personally couldn't get over the significant whitespace, (relying on invisible chara…

Thank you for the kind words! I'm happy that you can see the positives in Nim even though you dislike one of its most prominent features. Personally I love significant whitespace and have started using Nim because of this feature, basically back in the day I just wanted a Python alternative that was compiled. If you really dislike it that much, you may be able to convince Araq to bring back his old time idea of allow…

In your Direct Hardware Control chapter, please include a bit on targeting embedded systems like ARM Cortex-M microcontrollers. For instance, how to get started and problems/gotchas to watch out for. I'm going to try this out myself over the next few months so let me know if you need me to try something out or for a chapter review.
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