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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

#81

Post by andreaferretti »

Lovenim wrote: post #54

I should like to know if Nim can be used for machine learning or for deep learning. How could be located Nim in comparison to Julia, numpy, Torch7 and the tools for deep learning and AI that many big companies are open sourcing.

I think Nim would be ideal for that kind of applications, in particular neural networks stuff. But definitely we are not there yet. I try to explain my reasons in this blog post: http://rnduja.github.io/2015/10/21/scientific-nim/

To get to a point where we have something good to use, though, there are a few libraries to develop. I started working out a basic layer for linear algebra, that is needed in many applications - see http://unicredit.github.io/linear-algebra/

I hoped I would be able to start working on some neural network stuff based on that, but I did not find the time yet...

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

#82

Post by ilaksh »

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

There is a free manual, free tutorials, core source is free, all Nimble packages are free, free tutorials in blog posts, free first chapter, many free projects..

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

#83

Post by echelon »

EugeneOZ wrote: post #41
patates wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

may I ask, to do what? I think they don't claim to "be web" yet [0] and I doubt you were using PHP other than serving over http? [0] http://arewewebyet.com/

To create REST API for Angular2 SPAs :) Works great, yesterday we've launched second web app, based on this API, and all goes very smooth.

Did you use Hyper/Iron? How does it benchmark?

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

#84

Post by dom96 »

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…

Just realised that I forgot to answer one of your questions.

> how best can we help Nim to move towards that goal right now?

There are many ways. One way of course is to use Nim, test it, give us feedback, write Nim libraries and tell other people about it. But the best way is to get directly involved in Nim's development on Github, help us fix bugs, discuss the future direction of the language and help us implement new features. Here is a list of "Easy" bugs to get you started: https://github.com/nim-lang/Nim/labels/Easy

Another alternative is donations. Nim accepts donations through Bountysource[1], and Gratipay[2].

1 - https://www.bountysource.com/teams/nim

2 - https://gratipay.com/nim/

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

#86

Post by Ygg2 »

gokr wrote: post #72
Ygg2 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Just curious since I must have missed it - where is this claimed? On nim-lang.org? And yes, Nim is not 1.0 yet so some areas are still evolving. And no, I don't think I asked anything?

Generally across HN? Nim's forum? There isn't a single source, I've also found a bunch of Rust/Nim comparison that eventually state something along the lines of Rust is equally safe as Nim[1] and it then gets reiterated on HN.

[1]http://forum.nim-lang.org/t/1961

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

#87

Post by rbehrends »

Ygg2 wrote: post #17
gokr wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nim compiles to very efficient C or C++ (or js) and most benchmarks shows Nim programs performance being almost the exact same as C/C++ - and often better than Rust. So... why not using it to replace C and C++? Since I have worked with Nim (and I use it to implement my own language) I would say "hell yes"! It is such an immensely better language and it integrates perfectly with those eco systems. The GC is a good one…

> 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…

> Is he wrong about Nim not being safe when not using Boehm GC? Does it not segfault when sending GC pointers between threads?

If he has said that, yes, then that would be wrong [1, 2] in that you cannot send GCed references between threads in the first place. For example, the following code results in an error:

  var s = "foo"

  proc foo {.thread.} =
    echo s

  createThread(foo)
Compiling this results in:

  test.nim(3, 6) Error: 'foo' is not GC-safe as it accesses 's' which is a global using GC'ed memory
The problem here is one of expressiveness in that it is difficult for threads to share data (outside the limited and still experimental `parallel` construct). I've proposed a mechanism (shared, individually lockable heaps) modeled after Eiffel's SCOOP approach to remedy this, but so far this is just a proposal.

[1] Modulo any remaining compiler bugs, of course, or using explicitly unsafe features.

[2] Also, are you maybe confusing this with Go, which does have such a problem?

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

#88

Post by pcwalton »

rbehrends wrote: post #87
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…

> Is he wrong about Nim not being safe when not using Boehm GC? Does it not segfault when sending GC pointers between threads? If he has said that, yes, then that would be wrong [1, 2] in that you cannot send GCed references between threads in the first place. For example, the following code results in an error: var s = "foo" proc foo {.thread.} = echo s createThread(foo) Compiling this results in: test.nim(3, 6) Err…

Does Nim deep copy messages between threads now (i.e. serializes entire object graphs)? If so I'm glad to see it and yes, it would of course be safe, as it would basically be Erlang. (It wasn't thread-safe when I last looked a year-plus ago.)

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

#89

Post by sbuttgereit »

steveklabnik wrote: post #35
patates wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

may I ask, to do what? I think they don't claim to "be web" yet [0] and I doubt you were using PHP other than serving over http? [0] http://arewewebyet.com/

This website is _extremely_ outdated, please don't take it as accurate.

Agreed. That site was a good rundown at one point, but now it seems like a hurtful distraction.

Are there any other good references for what the current state of these sorts of capabilities have reached? There are any number of crates out there for this sort of thing, but assessing usefulness seems dodgy at this point.

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