Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Nim 1.0

nim-lang.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 308 posts

Re: Nim 1.0

#41

Post by stakhanov »

mumblemumble wrote: post #29
nfrankel wrote: post #20

Question (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…

I disagree in quite a few respects.

I think there's not much merit in discussing "C-flavored Python" as a description of nim, as that description seems just wrong.

Aside from significant whitespace, I don't find that many similarities with Python syntax.

Describing Nim as non-functional is misleading. Nim does have functional constructs and is a mixed-paradigm language involving both procedural and functional elements, just like Python.

"Firmly statically typed" is misleading. It's actually strongly-typed with great capabilities around type-inference so that, at times, you start to forget that it's typed in the first place and gives you a similar feel to a dynamically-typed language like Python.

Nim can run with garbage collection disabled. As a matter of fact, I seem to recall that the authors postulated that as a basic requirement that the language should be able to run in a low-level systems programming mode with garbage collection disabled (where it would be able to compete with Rust), and in a more high-level mode where it would rather compete on developer ergonomics/productivity.

I find Java-killer a potentially misleading analogy. I do think that it captures the kind of platform-independence that matters nowadays. And that is no longer Intel vs Sparc and Windows versus Linux, but rather the native ecosystem versus the JavaScript ecosystem.

Re: Nim 1.0

#42

Post by nepeckman »

nfrankel wrote: post #20

Question (genuine, not trolling): what's the use-case for Nim regarding other languages? What are its pros/cons?

Nim occupies an interesting place between Rust and Go. It has an easier learning curve than Rust. I picked up the basics in a weekend, and some of the more advanced functionality over a month. The optional GC is ideal for the application space, and I also don't find myself fighting the compiler very frequently. When compared to Go, Nim provides a lot more functionality. Object variants, a working implementation of generics, not to mention a great macro system.

Re: Nim 1.0

#43

Post by PMunch »

stakhanov wrote: post #41
mumblemumble wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I disagree in quite a few respects. I think there's not much merit in discussing "C-flavored Python" as a description of nim, as that description seems just wrong. Aside from significant whitespace, I don't find that many similarities with Python syntax. Describing Nim as non-functional is misleading. Nim does have functional constructs and is a mixed-paradigm language involving both procedural and functional element…

Not agreeing or disagreeing with either of you just wanted to add some details to the garbage collector thing.

Nims GC is able to either be controlled in terms of when and how long it runs, and it can be completely disabled in favour of manual memory management. In fact people have gotten it to run on really low-powered microcontrollers like the Attiny85, as well of course as various Arduino boards. The benefit of Nim in these systems is that since it compiles and has such a rich macro system your are able to write abstractions that the compiler will turn into highly efficient code. So you can still write business logic level readable and maintainable code, while the compiler spits out super-optimised versions. This of course requires you to first write these macros, but often times a little goes a long way.

Re: Nim 1.0

#44

Post by Symmetry »

nathcd wrote: post #8

Congratulations 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…

Also const/let/var declaration keywords for whether something is constant and whether its known at runtime or compile time are also very very friendly.

Re: Nim 1.0

#45

Post by PMunch »

dom96 wrote: post #38

Shameless plug, but by a nice coincidence, Manning has a discount on all printed books today. Among them is my book, Nim in Action, available for $25. If you're interested in Nim it's a great way to learn :) It was published in 2017 but we've ensured Nim is compatible with it (all book examples are in Nim's test suite), so apart from some minor deprecation warnings all examples should continue to work. Grab a copy he…

Not only a good resource to learn Nim, but also an excellent programming book in general!

Re: Nim 1.0

#46

Post by gjm11 »

19ylram49 wrote: post #35
13415 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's as easy as Python and as fast as C. That was my take when I looked at it and bought the book last year.

> as fast as C I mean, it actually is C, since the code is transpiled to C.

The fact that it uses C as a compilation target doesn't have much to do with whether it's as fast as C in practice. It's easy to imagine a compiler that generates C but generates terrible C that runs really slowly. (E.g., imagine it goes via some sort of stack-machine intermediate representation, and variables in the source language turn into things like stack[25] in the compiled code.)

Or consider: Every native-compiled language ends up as machine code, which is equivalent to assembly language, but for most (perhaps all) it would be grossly misleading to say "as fast as assembler".

Re: Nim 1.0

#47

Post by ptx »

19ylram49 wrote: post #27
nfrankel wrote: post #20

Question (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?

It all depends on the tone of the question, which is hard to discern in writing, so the clarification is helpful.

Edit: Yes, those are very valid and reasonable questions. Clarifying that it's not meant as trolling is also valid and reasonable, because writing is easily misunderstood in exactly that way - which is the reason smileys were invented. (And, to be clear, I'm not accusing anyone of missing smileys or of trolling. I am trying to express my agreement with both parent and grandparent.)

Re: Nim 1.0

#48

Post by danielecook »

nfrankel wrote: post #20

Question (genuine, not trolling): what's the use-case for Nim regarding other languages? What are its pros/cons?

I stumbled onto nim because a sequencing-data (DNA/RNA/etc) library was written for it (https://github.com/brentp/hts-nim). In addition to Go, it's been a great way to learn a compiled language. It's fast, easy to use, and has a friendly community.

Re: Nim 1.0

#49

Post by qaq »

Once ecosystem matures (good async db drivers) would be pretty good option for web dev

Re: Nim 1.0

#50

Post by steve_adams_86 »

treeform wrote: post #28
nfrankel wrote: post #20

Question (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…

> faster python that prevents typos

This was sort of my use-case and experience as well. I also find it can do what I needed JavaScript-based CLI tools to do with less dependencies/ecosystem bloat, and the resulting code is a lot nicer to work with. People have told me that's because I was using JS wrong, but I felt like Nim was such a huge step up for my use cases.

It's also just a pleasure to learn something new occasionally.

Post reply on HN