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Choosing Nim out of a crowded market for systems programming languages

forum.nim-lang.org

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Re: Choosing Nim out of a crowded market for systems programming languages

#31

Post by bitexploder »

PixyMisa wrote: post #8
rich_sasha wrote: post #6

I'm choosing between learning Nim or Rust. Nim frankly looks like the nicer of the two, but also less marketable and with smaller community. Suck to say but it's true.

Nim is also easier to learn - if you know Python and any conventional statically typed language, it's a walk in the park. I was producing fast, working code in a couple of hours. Learn Rust for your job, Nim for your side projects.

Something I long assumed about Rust before really getting started is that it is /slower/ to develop with. And at first that is definitely true because it introduces some pretty big, powerful, and constraining things. When you learn to work with these things and have taken your lumps discussing your code with `rustc` it is a lot of fun.

1.) Moves / borrowing / memory model 2.) Adopting a more functional style [to support 1.)]

My observation is that a lot of people /really/ want Rust to be imperative and treat it very imperatively they fight the borrow checker way more than if they adopt the idiomatic norms of Rust. There are some edge case data structures that can be a little painful and require some specialized knowledge, but once you are into Rust I don't even think it is unpleasant for side projects and general purpose hacking, but to get there it demands a higher level of mastery than most languages, but when you get there it can feel extremely productive.

Re: Choosing Nim out of a crowded market for systems programming languages

#32

Post by idealmedtech »

bitexploder wrote: post #27
ilovecaching wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They sound like someone that is attracted to chasing the high of the next technology to learn rather than picking a language like C/C++ that would have worked and given them way more career stability. Rather than mastering a bunch of programming languages they should have focused on one and built clout as a problem solver that doesn’t see a new shiny tool as a way to label their career. Boring popular language + focu…

That assumes a whole lot about their goals. If everyone sticks with C++ we would never have nice things like Zig/Nim/Rust that are advancing the conversation about how we should be doing systems programming tasks with code. C++ is quite influences by a lot of this. Like, let emm hack and learn. Also I think Nim is a very productive language to be hacking in and much easier to get going with than C++.

As they say, let people enjoy things

Re: Choosing Nim out of a crowded market for systems programming languages

#33

Post by ilovecaching »

bitexploder wrote: post #27
ilovecaching wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They sound like someone that is attracted to chasing the high of the next technology to learn rather than picking a language like C/C++ that would have worked and given them way more career stability. Rather than mastering a bunch of programming languages they should have focused on one and built clout as a problem solver that doesn’t see a new shiny tool as a way to label their career. Boring popular language + focu…

That assumes a whole lot about their goals. If everyone sticks with C++ we would never have nice things like Zig/Nim/Rust that are advancing the conversation about how we should be doing systems programming tasks with code. C++ is quite influences by a lot of this. Like, let emm hack and learn. Also I think Nim is a very productive language to be hacking in and much easier to get going with than C++.

That take detracts from the amazing work people have done over the decades to research and implement improvements to C and C++. We can innovate without throwing things away, even if it may seem boring to the uninitiated.

Re: Choosing Nim out of a crowded market for systems programming languages

#34

Post by _dain_ »

PixyMisa wrote: post #8
rich_sasha wrote: post #6

I'm choosing between learning Nim or Rust. Nim frankly looks like the nicer of the two, but also less marketable and with smaller community. Suck to say but it's true.

Nim is also easier to learn - if you know Python and any conventional statically typed language, it's a walk in the park. I was producing fast, working code in a couple of hours. Learn Rust for your job, Nim for your side projects.

I'm learning Rust now, I can say Nim is much harder. Maybe the language itself is simpler, but the documentation is just not very good. Very unpolished and amateurish. I actually forked out fifty quid for Araq's "Mastering Nim" book; it is atrocious. Spelling and grammatical errors on every page. The very first code example did not compile.

I also regularly run into utterly infuriating bugs while trying to accomplish what I thought would be simple things. Don't expect to be able to get anything useful done using iterators. They're zero-cost only if you don't value your own time.

On the other hand, all of Rust's docs are a joy and I haven't run into many technical problems so far.

Re: Choosing Nim out of a crowded market for systems programming languages

#35

Post by Herbstluft »

ilovecaching wrote: post #33
bitexploder wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That assumes a whole lot about their goals. If everyone sticks with C++ we would never have nice things like Zig/Nim/Rust that are advancing the conversation about how we should be doing systems programming tasks with code. C++ is quite influences by a lot of this. Like, let emm hack and learn. Also I think Nim is a very productive language to be hacking in and much easier to get going with than C++.

That take detracts from the amazing work people have done over the decades to research and implement improvements to C and C++. We can innovate without throwing things away, even if it may seem boring to the uninitiated.

People have done (and are still doing) amazing work in Fortran too. Why should we use C or C++ when Fortran was already perfectly fine?

Re: Choosing Nim out of a crowded market for systems programming languages

#36

Post by solarkraft »

ilovecaching wrote: post #33
bitexploder wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That assumes a whole lot about their goals. If everyone sticks with C++ we would never have nice things like Zig/Nim/Rust that are advancing the conversation about how we should be doing systems programming tasks with code. C++ is quite influences by a lot of this. Like, let emm hack and learn. Also I think Nim is a very productive language to be hacking in and much easier to get going with than C++.

That take detracts from the amazing work people have done over the decades to research and implement improvements to C and C++. We can innovate without throwing things away, even if it may seem boring to the uninitiated.

Sure. But we can also innovate with throwing things away, which has its own set of advantages.

Re: Choosing Nim out of a crowded market for systems programming languages

#37

Post by sekao »

ilovecaching wrote: post #33
bitexploder wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That assumes a whole lot about their goals. If everyone sticks with C++ we would never have nice things like Zig/Nim/Rust that are advancing the conversation about how we should be doing systems programming tasks with code. C++ is quite influences by a lot of this. Like, let emm hack and learn. Also I think Nim is a very productive language to be hacking in and much easier to get going with than C++.

That take detracts from the amazing work people have done over the decades to research and implement improvements to C and C++. We can innovate without throwing things away, even if it may seem boring to the uninitiated.

It doesn't detract from that at all, chief. What a weird thing to say. Particularly in the case of Nim -- it doesn't "throw away" C or C++, it compiles to them!

Re: Choosing Nim out of a crowded market for systems programming languages

#38

Post by vkazanov »

ilovecaching wrote: post #33
bitexploder wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That assumes a whole lot about their goals. If everyone sticks with C++ we would never have nice things like Zig/Nim/Rust that are advancing the conversation about how we should be doing systems programming tasks with code. C++ is quite influences by a lot of this. Like, let emm hack and learn. Also I think Nim is a very productive language to be hacking in and much easier to get going with than C++.

That take detracts from the amazing work people have done over the decades to research and implement improvements to C and C++. We can innovate without throwing things away, even if it may seem boring to the uninitiated.

...decades of research dedicated to handling problems introduced by C and amplified by C++.

Sometimes it makes sense to simply reset things.

Re: Choosing Nim out of a crowded market for systems programming languages

#39

Post by dataflow »

LAC-Tech wrote: post #24
dataflow wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The idea that a GC is somehow a hindrance to language adoption doesn't make any sense to me at all. Doesn't stop people loving Go. I meant as a systems programming language. To replace C or C++ or such.

Yeah fair enough. Though I have to say - are there really that many scenarios in 2022 where a GC is unacceptable? Hard real time systems, sure. Tight loops in a high performance game engine - I can imagine. But... web servers? Graphical apps? Daemons? I think there is a sweet spot for natively compiled languages, with garbage collectors, but also let you have a tight control of memory layout. There's really not many…

> Though I have to say - are there really that many scenarios in 2022 where a GC is unacceptable?

There are tons of C++ and C programmers who would find the introduction of a GC into their programs to be unacceptable, yes. That's why D keeps losing this battle.

Re: Choosing Nim out of a crowded market for systems programming languages

#40

Post by nine_k »

ilovecaching wrote: post #23
whage wrote: post #7

The author seems to be very knowledgeable about the different aspects of programming. Whether you agree with his opinions or not, this article I think is a great starting point for learning about many interesting topics. Definitely bookmarked for later.

They sound like someone that is attracted to chasing the high of the next technology to learn rather than picking a language like C/C++ that would have worked and given them way more career stability. Rather than mastering a bunch of programming languages they should have focused on one and built clout as a problem solver that doesn’t see a new shiny tool as a way to label their career. Boring popular language + focu…

Let's face it: C++ is pain. Even with all the improvements of the last 15 years.

Choosing something which us not C++ may be a long-term goal by itself.

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