Nim 2.0 thoughts • Hacker News Board

Re: Nim 2.0 thoughts

#41

Post by jjnoakes » Sat, May 15, 2021, 4:45 PM UTC

khaledh wrote: post #36

dragonwriter wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm also biased against languages that allow you to do the same thing in multiple ways So you oppose languages supporting both recursion and iteration?

recursion vs. iteration, inheritance vs. composition, interfaces vs. abstract classes, etc. are design choices that depend on the problem being solved. Language syntax is different; it's an opinion of the language designer which gives the language its distinctive style, and IMO shouldn't have much leeway in expressing the same thing in multiple ways. It's what gives the language its identity. For example, here's how…

I'm having trouble contrasting that to the many ways I can add 2 and 3, and this doesn't bother me:

    x = 2 + 3
    x = 3 + 2
    x = (2 + 3)
    x = (3 + 2)
    x = 2; x += 3
    x = 3; x += 2
    x = 2; x = x + 3
    x = 3; x = x + 2

Re: Nim 2.0 thoughts

#42

Post by komuher » Sat, May 15, 2021, 4:54 PM UTC

Man nim is such a cool language it just need some more community and better docs to get some hype.

Re: Nim 2.0 thoughts

#43

Post by Nimitz14 » Sat, May 15, 2021, 5:01 PM UTC

adenozine wrote: post #4

Potentially unpopular opinion, please go easy on me, I'm a python lover: I find a lot of Nim syntax just unnecessarily noisy. I wish that it had stuck much closer to Python syntax. I'm really excited about Nim, don't get me wrong. I like Araq, he's got a real hacker spirit not oft found at the head of big projects. Anyhow. I'm sure the experts in that topic will sort it all out. ORC is wildly impressive all around.

I agree. The syntax is the main reason I don't use it.

Re: Nim 2.0 thoughts

#44

Post by pindab0ter » Sat, May 15, 2021, 5:01 PM UTC

komuher wrote: post #42

Man nim is such a cool language it just need some more community and better docs to get some hype.

What's the main use case of Nim, would you say? Is it good for personal project/automation, for desktop or web apps? Etc.

Re: Nim 2.0 thoughts

#45

Post by serverholic » Sat, May 15, 2021, 5:15 PM UTC

Oreb wrote: post #35

I started using Nim recently and have been very impressed. It feels like a better Rust than Rust, and a better Go than Go. Why doesn’t Nim get more attention?

Nim has a garbage-collector right? In that case I don't see how you can compare Nim and Rust. The Go comparison makes more sense.

Re: Nim 2.0 thoughts

#46

Post by open-source-ux » Sat, May 15, 2021, 5:16 PM UTC

davidkunz wrote: post #38

Oreb wrote: post #35

I started using Nim recently and have been very impressed. It feels like a better Rust than Rust, and a better Go than Go. Why doesn’t Nim get more attention?

I think one reason is that there's no big corporation behind it, for Rust it was Mozilla and now the members of the Rust Foundation, for Go it is Google. But I totally agree, Nim is an awesome language and definitely deserves more attention!

"I think one reason is that there's no big corporation behind it"

I agree. The popularity of some programming languages is undoubtedly buoyed by corporate sponsorship or the association with a company. This is not a bad thing, but it means other languages struggle to generate as much interest.

Also, without a generous benefactor, open source languages have to scrape funding together piecemeal from different sources. For example, both Rust and Go have had (or still have) dedicated staff writing documentation for the language. This is a luxury that other languages cannot fund or afford.

I actually posted a Ask HN question of this very topic recently: Can new programming languages attract developers without funding?"

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27043717

Re: Nim 2.0 thoughts

#47

Post by one2three4 » Sat, May 15, 2021, 5:20 PM UTC

Oreb wrote: post #35

I started using Nim recently and have been very impressed. It feels like a better Rust than Rust, and a better Go than Go. Why doesn’t Nim get more attention?

How's Nim faring with regards to easy programming for multicores? (I think that's the main selling point of Go).

Re: Nim 2.0 thoughts

#48

Post by dragonwriter » Sat, May 15, 2021, 5:23 PM UTC

khaledh wrote: post #36

dragonwriter wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm also biased against languages that allow you to do the same thing in multiple ways So you oppose languages supporting both recursion and iteration?

recursion vs. iteration, inheritance vs. composition, interfaces vs. abstract classes, etc. are design choices that depend on the problem being solved. Language syntax is different; it's an opinion of the language designer which gives the language its distinctive style, and IMO shouldn't have much leeway in expressing the same thing in multiple ways. It's what gives the language its identity. For example, here's how…

> recursion vs. iteration, inheritance vs. composition, interfaces vs. abstract classes, etc. are design choices that depend on the problem being solved.

Recursion and inheritance are interchangeable (in fact, either can be implemented as syntax sugar over the other); while some people find one or the other more natural for a particular problem, there is considerable disagreement among people over which is more natural for which problems. In practice people choose between them based on personal preference and what the language they are using favors (e.g., you probably [0] don’t use recursion unless it is of fairly tightly bounded depth in a language like Python that doesn’t optimize tail calls.

> Language syntax is different; it's an opinion of the language designer which gives the language its distinctive style, and IMO shouldn't have much leeway in expressing the same thing in multiple ways.

As noted, recursion vs. iteration is exactly a syntax-preference decision, and one on which some languages are highly opinionated (Python) forming an important part of their distinctive style, while others are not.

[0] though you could use a tail call optimization decorator

Re: Nim 2.0 thoughts

#49

Post by fastball » Sat, May 15, 2021, 5:34 PM UTC

serverholic wrote: post #45

Oreb wrote: post #35

I started using Nim recently and have been very impressed. It feels like a better Rust than Rust, and a better Go than Go. Why doesn’t Nim get more attention?

Nim has a garbage-collector right? In that case I don't see how you can compare Nim and Rust. The Go comparison makes more sense.

Yes garbage-collected, with a caveat. From the website:

> Nim's memory management is deterministic and customizable with destructors and move semantics, inspired by C++ and Rust. It is well-suited for embedded, hard-realtime systems.

Re: Nim 2.0 thoughts

#50

Post by michaelsbradley » Sat, May 15, 2021, 5:35 PM UTC

serverholic wrote: post #45

Oreb wrote: post #35

I started using Nim recently and have been very impressed. It feels like a better Rust than Rust, and a better Go than Go. Why doesn’t Nim get more attention?

Nim has a garbage-collector right? In that case I don't see how you can compare Nim and Rust. The Go comparison makes more sense.

It has a garbage collector by default, though it can be disabled (--gc:none) and then you can manage memory manually.

In the future, Nim's default memory management will use reference counting with destructors and move semantics inspired by Rust and C++.

https://nim-lang.org/blog/2020/10/15/introduction-to-arc-orc...

https://nim-lang.org/docs/destructors.html

https://nim-lang.org/docs/nimc.html