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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

#71

Post by SeanDav »

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…

A major concern to me is how to Debug Nim. Considering it compiles into C as a first step, I would have thought that Debugging may have quite a few issues and gotchas as well as some good tips and tricks.

I am not sure if this is covered, but did not notice it mentioned in the contents.

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

#72

Post by gokr »

Ygg2 wrote: post #61
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? :)

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?

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

#73

Post by gokr »

SeanDav wrote: post #71
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…

A major concern to me is how to Debug Nim. Considering it compiles into C as a first step, I would have thought that Debugging may have quite a few issues and gotchas as well as some good tips and tricks. I am not sure if this is covered, but did not notice it mentioned in the contents.

Debugging via gdb and frontends using gdb like KDevelop or QtCreator works very well - except data drilling. But that may be solved eventually.

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

#74

Post by masklinn »

gokr wrote: post #62
pcwalton wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> I just wish we could look at Nim as a language with different design goals than Rust.

Claims that Nim is memory-safe when it's not is not a difference of design goal though.

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

#75

Post by gokr »

eaurouge wrote: post #70
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…

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.

Two links that you may have seen: http://forum.nim-lang.org/t/658 http://disconnected.systems/nim-on-arduino/

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

#76

Post by dom96 »

eaurouge wrote: post #70
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…

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.

Will do!

Please do try it out and report the results on the Nim forums (or via blog post). This is one of the chapters where I will need to do some research first, as I don't have much experience with this kind of stuff. So any ideas for this chapter are very much appreciated!

I thought it would be a nice chapter to end the book with though. Plus I am excited to play with this sort of stuff.

My current plan for this chapter is to try replicating some of the projects in the Arduino starter kit and to see where I can go from there.

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

#77

Post by dom96 »

dang wrote: post #69

We added "Show HN" to the title (the convention for sharing your own work on HN) because the post is by the author and, when the project is a book, a free chapter is a nice way to let people try it out.

Thank you! I was wondering whether this was eligible for "Show HN".

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

#78

Post by FraaJad »

SeanDav wrote: post #68
AsyncAwait wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This tab-space is a non issue for actual python programmers, because anyone who has done programming in Python for any decent amount of time (say > 5 hours) would stick to using spaces. and learn how to configure their editor to make it a non issue.

Pretty much how, parens are not a concern for actual lisp programmers.

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

#80

Post by dang »

dom96 wrote: post #77
dang wrote: post #69

We added "Show HN" to the title (the convention for sharing your own work on HN) because the post is by the author and, when the project is a book, a free chapter is a nice way to let people try it out.

Thank you! I was wondering whether this was eligible for "Show HN".

Considering how much work a book is, it would be cruel to say anything else.
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