Earlier quoted context omitted.
What are Nim’s main weaknesses?
Tabs are not allowed for indentation.
Nice. I don't mean to be flippant, but I would consider that a feature.
A Programming Language Underdog
61–70 of 238 posts
Re: A Programming Language Underdog
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
A biggy is that it only really has a single developer, and no big corporate users. And relatedly the library ecosystem is relatively weak. It also has a GC, so it can't be used for really low-level stuff where that is a problem. It's looking pretty promising though. Especially if you are a fan of python's syntax.
In this very article, which is pretty light on details, one of the few facts presented is that you can disable GC.
Agreed. I purged a bunch of stuff and still feel like I left too much in.
A couple of bonus facts for you:
- they've got an effects tracking system where you can have the compiler track (and whistleblow!) which functions are pure or not
- their multi-phase compiler allows you to read in source code at build time (from files or external programs!)
- their macro system is typesafe as it operates at the AST level
- the guy who created it will always tell you how he feels
- again with their macro system... there are FP libs, pattern matching libs, and OO libs that can "literally" transform the language to fit your preference
- and one more just for you: they don't support tail call optimization (ducks)
Re: A Programming Language Underdog
#63I find the framing of “no big backers” kind of weird, considering they do have one big backer in a crypto currency startup that is providing the overwhelming majority of its funding. Sure it’s not the big coffers of Google, but it’s concerning that the entire language seemingly depends on the fates and desires of an incredibly volatile field. https://nim-lang.org/sponsors.html
It is not only that the companies pushing those languages have lots of money, it's that they already have lots of users. Often, they publish their language as if it were an "upgrade" from what they were already using, with an even greater chance of success if it is compatible with existing ecosystem. On the other hand, a language like Nim is starting from scratch. They don't have a specific target audience. There is…
Compile-time function evaluation, superb metaprogramming and easy to write at a very low-level while you can enjoy the GC for non-perf critical parts. I use those daily in cryptography, VM/interpreter and bigint libraries development and in Nim it's a blast.
Re: A Programming Language Underdog
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
I like the concept of Nim, as in: fast, statically typed, inferred, compiled etc. but I do not enjoy whitespace-sensitive languages, so am keeping an eye on Crystal more than Nim. If that doesn't bother you, Nim is really neat.
Actually, I'm curious why people don't like white space sensitive languages. I get the tab v space thing, and there are certainly a couple of other down sides, but none of these seem like deal breakers to me. Given that python was the second language I learned, it's possible that I drank the coolaid early and I'm blind to some things that are truly egregious. So the question is: why do folks completely avoid a langua…
To me, braces are simpler and more explicit, but then I drank the C/C++ koolaid.
Whitespace is intended for human readability, with spaces and tabs not having any implicitly contradictory meaning. In a whitespace sensitive language, you have to set your text editor to make those invisible characters visible to make certain to only use the correct invisible character, then employ multiple such characters based on the necessary level of indentation to do the work of a single set of braces.
Re: A Programming Language Underdog
#65Really excited to see Nim here on top of HN. I wish it would gain more traction. I like the pythonic syntax and easy 'fast code'.
I like the concept of Nim, as in: fast, statically typed, inferred, compiled etc. but I do not enjoy whitespace-sensitive languages, so am keeping an eye on Crystal more than Nim. If that doesn't bother you, Nim is really neat.
Nim is my first whitespace-sensitive language. I had no plans to love it. We're now engaged.
Re: A Programming Language Underdog
#66I do not think all this language fragmentation is a good thing. A million little obscure languages that all at the end of the day do the same thing.
Yeah, we need language research to keep devising new features and more efficient ways of programming, but this is different.
I wish the world would get behind a couple well thought out languages that cover most programming needs (functional, systems/bare metal, scripting) and stick with those.
I've seen some ridiculous and unsustainable stacks at some shops because everyone got to pick their favorite language. Then the morale of subsequent hires is in toilet because there's such a cognitive load to learn all these little crap languages.
I feel like some of these languages come about because someone needed to do some task and didn't understand or take the time to learn how to do it in an existing language. Among the latest versions of the mainstream language, there is no programming paradigm you cannot do.
And where these obscure languages REALLY fall down is tooling. Got debugger support for this? Got perftool support? No, of course you don't.
With a small number of languages, work can be put into serious tooling, and fixing compiler bugs, rather than a few devs spread thin trying to keep up with the bugs in their hobby language.
Re: A Programming Language Underdog
#67I do not think all this language fragmentation is a good thing. A million little obscure languages that all at the end of the day do the same thing. Yeah, we need language research to keep devising new features and more efficient ways of programming, but this is different. I wish the world would get behind a couple well thought out languages that cover most programming needs (functional, systems/bare metal, scripting…
See, this is what I thought too. Turns out, by compiling to C or C++, you can use their toolchains. Debuggers, codecov, emscripten...
Re: A Programming Language Underdog
#68All the languages mentioned got rather much publicity in the last years. Wouldn't call one of them obscure..
I tried to phrase it as "wandering down the obscurity path" because I agree with what you're saying: they aren't obscure. They're just not the default choice.
Re: A Programming Language Underdog
#69Another interesting upcoming language ist JAI: https://inductive.no/jai/ Its purpose is to become a better C++ for game development (high performance, simplicity).
Can anyone explain what "designed for good programmers" means?
Many programming languages seem as though they are designed to force the programmer to be "safe", Rust's borrow checker is an example, but so is basically every GC-language ever. What Jon means by "designed for good programmers" is that the language design doesn't have this mindset that it needs to prevent the programmers from harming themselves, and instead focuses on allowing people who know what they're doing to be more productive doing it.
Re: A Programming Language Underdog
#70I do not think all this language fragmentation is a good thing. A million little obscure languages that all at the end of the day do the same thing. Yeah, we need language research to keep devising new features and more efficient ways of programming, but this is different. I wish the world would get behind a couple well thought out languages that cover most programming needs (functional, systems/bare metal, scripting…
It’s no different from ecosystem/library fragmentation within a language. For example, there are at least six approaches to accelerating numerical code in Python (weave, plain C + ctypes, Cython, f2py, numexpr, numba) each with its own cognitive load, interop and debug problems (Julia advocates rejoice, but it’s coming for them too).
It seems like a community needs huge incentives to avoid churn and fragmentation eg (a) strong backwards compatibility commitments, (b) big backing company to do the endless boring stuff, (c) strong benevolent dictator, ...
The same is true for languages except there’s no outer “scope”, except for platforms like iOS that might dictate toolchains or a company where CTO might make such choices.
But trying to avoid fragmentation among hackers seems like barking up the wrong tree.