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The Nim programming language

nim-lang.org

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Re: The Nim programming language

#91

Post by kem »

Varriount wrote: post #11
choward wrote: post #8

Whenever I see a new project my first question is always "why?". From the FAQ: Why yet another programming language? Nim is one of the very few programmable statically typed languages, and one of the even fewer that produces native binaries that require no runtime or interpreter. That's it? That doesn't answer the question at all. In fact, it makes it even less clear. All it says it that there are other programming l…

Well, if you look at the front page, you'll also see: High-performance garbage-collected language Compiles to C, C++ or JavaScript Produces dependency-free binaries Runs on Windows, macOS, Linux, and more And of course, the "Features" button right under the text leads to https://nim-lang.org/features.html

Nim looks great, but I have to admit after looking through the website it's unclear to me why I would use this over similar alternatives.

In particular, why Nim over Go (or why Go over Nim)?

Is the Python's established presence and resource base (not trivial at all) the only reason one would prefer it over Nim?

Re: The Nim programming language

#92

Post by jjnoakes »

kem wrote: post #91
Varriount wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, if you look at the front page, you'll also see: High-performance garbage-collected language Compiles to C, C++ or JavaScript Produces dependency-free binaries Runs on Windows, macOS, Linux, and more And of course, the "Features" button right under the text leads to https://nim-lang.org/features.html

Nim looks great, but I have to admit after looking through the website it's unclear to me why I would use this over similar alternatives. In particular, why Nim over Go (or why Go over Nim)? Is the Python's established presence and resource base (not trivial at all) the only reason one would prefer it over Nim?

Go doesn't support as many platforms as Nim, for one.

And Go doesn't give you access to as many system libraries, for a second. There's cgo, of course, but that has its own can of worms.

I hear the type systems are fairly different as well, which is important to some.

Re: The Nim programming language

#93

Post by moomin »

gigatexal wrote: post #88
moomin wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't use Maven, but there are multiple tools that can use Maven repositories that aren't Maven, and I'd recommend one of those. :)

I was only trying to learn it because a take home coding assignment for an interview asked to use maven for its build process. I found the whole experience (using maven) disheartening while I was able to code up the assignment using maven and my inexperience with it cost me going to the second round. I have only myself to blame though.

That sucks :(. But I can tell you there are plenty of organisations (e.g. Thoughtworks) where Maven is regarded as a bad tool that should be avoided. That doesn't help you much if it's part of a job you want, though. :(

Re: The Nim programming language

#94

Post by moigagoo »

dom96 wrote: post #55
kaushalmodi wrote: post #30

I dig the changes in the landing pages, but I wished the documentation pages got the same treatment. At present, the documentation is not readable easily on mobile browsers. Are you considering converting the documentation pages to responsive design too? Also the black and yellow theme looks great on the home page, but that theme loses its continuity on all the other pages. It's as if the home page was designed by a…

> Are you considering converting the documentation pages to responsive design too? Unless someone volunteers to do this it likely won't happen any time soon. As for the continuity. Not all pages can have the same "section" style, the documentation page for example is just composed of a list of links and descriptions. Of course, if you have ideas on how to improve the continuity then I'm all ears :)

I've just submitted a tiny PR¹ that makes docs a bit mobile-friendlier. It turns out that the docs template already uses media queries to rebuild the layout for smaller screens, it's just that these queries are not triggered on mobile.

[1] https://github.com/nim-lang/Nim/pull/5737

Re: The Nim programming language

#95

Post by nimmer »

jjnoakes wrote: post #92
kem wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nim looks great, but I have to admit after looking through the website it's unclear to me why I would use this over similar alternatives. In particular, why Nim over Go (or why Go over Nim)? Is the Python's established presence and resource base (not trivial at all) the only reason one would prefer it over Nim?

Go doesn't support as many platforms as Nim, for one. And Go doesn't give you access to as many system libraries, for a second. There's cgo, of course, but that has its own can of worms. I hear the type systems are fairly different as well, which is important to some.

Nim is programmable with macros and templates and very flexible. Go is not at all.

Re: The Nim programming language

#96

Post by cylinder714 »

choward wrote: post #8

Whenever I see a new project my first question is always "why?". From the FAQ: Why yet another programming language? Nim is one of the very few programmable statically typed languages, and one of the even fewer that produces native binaries that require no runtime or interpreter. That's it? That doesn't answer the question at all. In fact, it makes it even less clear. All it says it that there are other programming l…

Aw, what could be more appropriate for a site named "Hacker News" than a link to a new programming language?

Re: The Nim programming language

#97

Post by FridgeSeal »

kootenpv wrote: post #67
FridgeSeal wrote: post #13

As someone who does a lot of Python programming, I really love the idea of Nim, and I've started learning it, I just need to find some more time to get back to learning it. Given there's a pandas style + out-of-core support I'm interested in trying to use it for a lot of data extraction + cleaning + prep sort of tasks given how speedy it can be, being built on top of C...

Are you saying there is some library already existing? I'd be curious to try it then.

Sorry I only just saw this message: yeah, turns out there's 2:

* https://github.com/qqtop/nimdataframe

And

* https://github.com/bluenote10/NimData

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