Nim Version 1.6.6 Released • Hacker News Board

Re: Nim Version 1.6.6 Released

#101

Post by carterza » Fri, May 06, 2022, 3:40 PM UTC

SolitudeSF wrote: post #80

carterza wrote: post #77

I started programming in Nim around 2015 and still write code in it from time to time. At this point I would have a tough time suggesting the language to anyone for much. While you can certainly accomplish almost any programming task with Nim, how much frustration you will encounter fighting the compiler and broken / under-specified language features and semantics might be a turn-off. There are other major warts with…

its true that leadership does nothing and development is stuck, but even in this state nim is probably enough for most people. > how much frustration you will encounter fighting the compiler and broken / under-specified language features and semantics might be a turn-off. unless you limittest generics, most people wont even encounter this. > My advice would be to look elsewhere. that would imply that there is a bette…

I'm not sure there is one - but I guess a language where you're not constantly dealing with horrible error message, an under-specified and broken implementation and a shitty stdlib - might be better, even if it doesn't have some of the nicer frills of Nim.

Re: Nim Version 1.6.6 Released

#102

Post by carterza » Fri, May 06, 2022, 4:30 PM UTC

planetis wrote: post #95

dinHeld wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, they absolutely ignored warnings and used rude insults. And if you were in their situation, you would have too. Have you ever dealt with someone that constantly lies and misrepresents your opinions to make you look like a villain? Have ever gotten frustrated, because the person you're arguing with is constantly shifting the goalpost to their benefit? Have you ever said something needlessly rude out of frustration…

I agree to some extend and that's why I believe bans should be lifted after 30minutes when people have calmed down. But on the other hand one should watch how he behaves and not blaming it on others.

dom96 simply needs to go - they are nothing but self-serving and they cause more damage to the Nim community than any other member by far.

I'm not even including the horrible software they've authored and cargo culted into the language's ecosystem and tooling. That should be enough of an offense to be removed from any decision-making role.

Re: Nim Version 1.6.6 Released

#103

Post by Tiberium » Fri, May 06, 2022, 5:17 PM UTC

kanonieer wrote: post #86

planetis wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What the heck man? This doesn't match my experience at all. And I can't find your username on neither matrix nor discord. Did you just found a chance for a sucker punch and took it? I bet Zig is the wonder land.

You're proving my point. Any criticism must be an attack (e.g. suckerpunch in this case) and must be met with heckling and banning. Zig is no wonderland, but I haven't experienced things like the creator of the language personally engaging in almost every drama and banning community members.

In my experience the creator of the language (Araq) almost never engages in drama stuff. Are you perhaps mistaking him with someone else?

Re: Nim Version 1.6.6 Released

#104

Post by antifa » Fri, May 06, 2022, 6:44 PM UTC

eklavya wrote: post #46

rosetremiere wrote: post #38

A bit off-topic, but I'd like to see a language à la rust+gc, with pattern matching, traits, and the functional stuff rust got right, but without all the worries of lifetimes, and maybe some easier trait management (function signatures become very ugly imo). I've heard the claim that lean is going in this direction.

Absolutely, I think there is a huge opportunity here. A rust+gc lang which has seamless ffi with rust would be a killer in my opinion.

Not just seamless, I want it to use rust libraries natively and basically be rust under the hood. Think coffeescript but for rust. The problem with most people's suggestions will be that it deviates too far from rust (giant VMs) and a new language would need a duplicate ecosystem.

Re: Nim Version 1.6.6 Released

#105

Post by ThomasTJdev » Fri, May 06, 2022, 8:10 PM UTC

cumshitpiss wrote: post #10

Hi, is Nim a good replacement for python? I write a lot of scripts, but I find that python can get cumbersome to maintain. I'm looking for something with stricter typing and a sane packaging/directory system, but also easy/fast to write. If Nim can work with numpy it's a plus

For me it was. Python was everything for me - but too slow. It was a pretty quick to convert software to Nim, and I have never looked back. You don't get the whole ecosystem from python, but you get fast code and easy syntax. We even often use Nim instead of small shell scripting.

Re: Nim Version 1.6.6 Released

#106

Post by HiddenBek » Fri, May 06, 2022, 8:19 PM UTC

carterza wrote: post #77

I started programming in Nim around 2015 and still write code in it from time to time. At this point I would have a tough time suggesting the language to anyone for much. While you can certainly accomplish almost any programming task with Nim, how much frustration you will encounter fighting the compiler and broken / under-specified language features and semantics might be a turn-off. There are other major warts with…

Nothing here is untrue, but from my perspective it's overstated. I don't use discord, but I visit the forum daily, follow most of the RFCs, and spend a lot of time coding in Nim (https://github.com/dsrw/enu). I really like Nim, mostly like its community, and think many more people should be using it.

I'm sure fusion could have been handled better, and for 2021 the roadmap was a bit hazy, but I can't think of any other big missteps. Araq, dom, PMunch, and other senior folks are in the forms helping people and answering questions every day, and my interactions with all of them has been very positive. The big post 1.0 feature was arc/orc, and that was very well communicated. Bugs are being fixed, useful new features are being added, and future plans are being discussed in the open.

And Nim itself is great. The "if it compiles, it works" factor is high, yet I almost never feel like the compiler is fighting me. Simple things are simple (I'm teaching it to a group of 12 year olds), it's incredibly flexible, it's fast, and it's suitable for almost any sort of problem. There's nothing else like it, and I expect I'd continue using it for at least a decade even if it switched into maintenance mode tomorrow. I think it will take at least that long for something better to come along.

Re: Nim Version 1.6.6 Released

#107

Post by [deleted] » Fri, May 06, 2022, 8:20 PM UTC

carterza wrote: post #77

I started programming in Nim around 2015 and still write code in it from time to time. At this point I would have a tough time suggesting the language to anyone for much. While you can certainly accomplish almost any programming task with Nim, how much frustration you will encounter fighting the compiler and broken / under-specified language features and semantics might be a turn-off. There are other major warts with…

[deleted]

Re: Nim Version 1.6.6 Released

#108

Post by dsrw » Fri, May 06, 2022, 8:46 PM UTC

carterza wrote: post #102

planetis wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree to some extend and that's why I believe bans should be lifted after 30minutes when people have calmed down. But on the other hand one should watch how he behaves and not blaming it on others.

dom96 simply needs to go - they are nothing but self-serving and they cause more damage to the Nim community than any other member by far. I'm not even including the horrible software they've authored and cargo culted into the language's ecosystem and tooling. That should be enough of an offense to be removed from any decision-making role.

I haven't seen this at all, and am actually baffled that you're talking about dom. My experience of him has been the literal opposite.

He didn't cargo cult his software into the ecosystem. He made the ecosystem. Nimble is the package manager because there was no package manager until dom wrote one. Jester is the default web framework because it was first, and despite its age it's still pretty good. Same for choosenim. And asyncdispatch. And all of the other tools/libraries that he wrote.

Obviously writing some early software doesn't give him a free pass. I could understand the attitude if he was a jerk, but I've never seen him be anything but helpful.

Re: Nim Version 1.6.6 Released

#109

Post by carterza » Fri, May 06, 2022, 10:00 PM UTC

dsrw wrote: post #108

carterza wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

dom96 simply needs to go - they are nothing but self-serving and they cause more damage to the Nim community than any other member by far. I'm not even including the horrible software they've authored and cargo culted into the language's ecosystem and tooling. That should be enough of an offense to be removed from any decision-making role.

I haven't seen this at all, and am actually baffled that you're talking about dom. My experience of him has been the literal opposite. He didn't cargo cult his software into the ecosystem. He made the ecosystem. Nimble is the package manager because there was no package manager until dom wrote one. Jester is the default web framework because it was first, and despite its age it's still pretty good. Same for choosenim…

I mean, I have experienced first-hand, dom96 being a jerk directly to me after I spent months of effort building something for the community. I'm not the only one either. If it was just dom96 being a jerk my criticisms might not hold water, but the problem is far deeper than that.

Try to advocate for replacing any of dom's tools / software packages and see what happens. Try to advocate for taking Nim in a direction counter to what dom perceives as the right one, even though they no longer contribute to the language anymore besides telling people to fix their broken software they're no longer willing to maintain, or to throw their weight around in RFCs / IRC.

Re: Nim Version 1.6.6 Released

#110

Post by carterza » Fri, May 06, 2022, 10:34 PM UTC

HiddenBek wrote: post #106

carterza wrote: post #77

I started programming in Nim around 2015 and still write code in it from time to time. At this point I would have a tough time suggesting the language to anyone for much. While you can certainly accomplish almost any programming task with Nim, how much frustration you will encounter fighting the compiler and broken / under-specified language features and semantics might be a turn-off. There are other major warts with…

Nothing here is untrue, but from my perspective it's overstated. I don't use discord, but I visit the forum daily, follow most of the RFCs, and spend a lot of time coding in Nim ( https://github.com/dsrw/enu ). I really like Nim, mostly like its community, and think many more people should be using it. I'm sure fusion could have been handled better, and for 2021 the roadmap was a bit hazy, but I can't think of any ot…

The compiler works until you stress the type system or try to take advantage of features that are experimental and then stay that way forever. How many iterations of concepts have we been through at this point? What happened to hot code reloading? Why do we have all these legacy GCs?

The point is the compiler has more and more cruft that makes it increasingly more complex and increasingly unreliable. It also makes it so that bugs are harder and harder to fix. Not to mention that it's basically impossible to track what is going on with the language at any given point in time because there is no roadmap or updated status. It also doesn't help that certain folks like to create ten GitHub issues and RFCs for every perceived slight in the language.

Once again, the problem boils down to a complete lack of leadership or interest in running the show - and instead of empowering the community to make that happen, leadership sits back and acts like everything is great and perfect and pats themselves on the back. When someone complains that it is not, leadership finds a way to defend itself and turn sentiment against the person complaining. It happens over and over again and it's why Nim isn't a success story like languages that actually have empowered communities and leaders that are interested in leading and not just collecting book revenues / making .io games, etc... while actively gatekeeping those who would like to get involved in making things better.