This is super cool. I built a small CLI tool with Nim back in 2017, and it was a joy. It ended up being very accessible to the rest of the team for further development (probably more credit due to the folks building Nim than to my design) and I believe it's still in use. It's a good language, and it was a nice break from JavaScript (which I also enjoy, but not so much for CLI tools). If you haven't tried it out yet, I highly recommend it.
Nim 1.0
21–30 of 308 posts
Re: Nim 1.0
#22> Type identifiers should be in PascalCase [1] I don't get why some languages adopt the 'PascalCase for types' approach (which is fine), but then a bunch of the built-in types such as 'string', 'set', 'int64', etc. are lowercase... it's annoyingly inconsistent. [1] https://nim-lang.org/docs/nep1.html#introduction-naming-conv...
On the contrary, I feel that the stylistic [and sometimes semantic] separation of primitive and boxed types in languages (e.g., `byte` VS `Byte` in Java) improves the developer experience, in that I can very quickly dissect the type of value that I’m dealing with when reading the code.
Re: Nim 1.0
#23Congratulations Nim team! :D I've had Nim installed on my laptop for a long time and I've always enjoyed tinkering around with it over the years. Maybe now it's time to find a bigger project to try it out on. This is a tiny thing, but just to highlight something unique I like about Nim, using `func` to declare pure functions (and `proc` for others) has been a small, but really nice quality of life improvement. It's s…
I've really liked that, too. Its approach to mutability is also very nice.
The combined result may not be nearly as principled as the Haskell way of doing controlled mutability with double-checking from the compiler that you aren't breaking your own rules, but it's a nice pragmatic compromise that's easy to understand without having to rewire the way you think about programming.
Re: Nim 1.0
#24Does it support tabs for indentation yet?
Re: Nim 1.0
#25Christmas had come early!!
Re: Nim 1.0
#26Congrats to the team!
Could Nim be used to generate a framework for Xcode and the the same code be used in a Windows C++ or .NET project?
I've been looking for ages for a cross platform solution that can be used to create dynamic or static libraries that isn't C++.
Re: Nim 1.0
#27Question (genuine, not trolling): what's the use-case for Nim regarding other languages? What are its pros/cons?
Those are valid questions when evaluating an unknown technology. How could anyone consider this trolling? Not to digress but have we become too sensitive?
Re: Nim 1.0
#28Question (genuine, not trolling): what's the use-case for Nim regarding other languages? What are its pros/cons?
To me Nim is a faster python that prevents typos. It can also compile to javascript.
I used it where I would use python - backend of web apps. But now instead running a cluster of servers I can just run 1 because nim is fast.
I also used to write frontend in CoffeeScript, but switched to nim because I can share code between backend and frontend. I don't have typos. I don't inherit any JS or OOP legacy like TypeScript.
Re: Nim 1.0
#29Question (genuine, not trolling): what's the use-case for Nim regarding other languages? What are its pros/cons?
At first blush, it's easy to describe Nim as C-flavored Python, but I'm not sure that quite captures it. The syntax is similar, but that's about where the similarities end - Python is deeply, fundamentally a dynamic language, and Nim one of the more firmly statically typed non-functional languages out there.
You could also describe it as being competitive with Rust, but with more compromises for the sake of developer ergonomics. Garbage collection, for example.
For my part, I'm finding it attractive as a potential Java-killer. It isn't write-once-run-everywhere, but, now that x86 and Linux have eaten the world, that's not quite such a compelling feature anymore. And Nim smooths things over a bit by making cross compiling dead easy. In return, I get better type safety, better performance, a much better C FFI, and less verbose, easier-to-understand code.
Re: Nim 1.0
#30Great! I love this language, so simple and powerful, so fast executables!
I hope I don't spoil the party by asking: What's the status of GUI bindings?