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Choosing Nim out of a crowded market for systems programming languages

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

#251

Post by poulpy123 »

_dain_ wrote: post #224
j-james wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did we read the same book? I find Mastering Nim a pretty excellent reference. (And you have to install the pixels library :-P) The online documentation, certainly, could be better. I sometimes find standard library documentation lacking in examples, and compiler documentation is currently undergoing a massive refactoring effort on a couple of fronts. But the manual ( https://nim-lang.github.io/Nim/manual.html ) isn't…

>(And you have to install the pixels library :-P) I knew someone would say this: it doesn't tell you that, does it? It's supposed to be an introductory reference work, so surely "how to install the 3rd party package required by our hello world example" should be included? And anyway, even after I installed pixels the code still didn't run right. I honestly found it insulting that such an expensive book would have suc…

can you post a picture of the page ? I'm curious now

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

#252

Post by aussiesnack »

Cyph0n wrote: post #229
aussiesnack wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your response seemed to fall into a category common amongst Rust enthusiasts, which is to assume anyone resistant to the lure is ipso facto lazy or misguided. Your own question was a hint at laziness. I have no idea how much effort the writer put into evaluating Rust. I doubt you do either. I don't know why some of us find Rust difficult. Perhaps it just is, or isn't, or is for some people and not for others, or perh…

Nowhere did I say or even imply that people are “lazy or misguided” for not learning Rust.

Well I didn't see another way to gloss your question:

> would it really be too expensive to invest some time to learn it?

I'm entirely happy to take your word that I've misinterpreted the question. Back-and-forth in comments about intended meaning is rarely useful. So my apologies.

But the general attitude in the Rust community (of which I have no idea whether or not you're a part) absolutely is "Rust is not hard, and if you find it so, that's a measure of your dysfunction, not a description of the language".

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

#253

Post by _dain_ »

poulpy123 wrote: post #251
_dain_ wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>(And you have to install the pixels library :-P) I knew someone would say this: it doesn't tell you that, does it? It's supposed to be an introductory reference work, so surely "how to install the 3rd party package required by our hello world example" should be included? And anyway, even after I installed pixels the code still didn't run right. I honestly found it insulting that such an expensive book would have suc…

can you post a picture of the page ? I'm curious now

Actually I just double checked and it turns out I misremembered; it does tell you how to install the library. But it didn't work properly when I tried to run it, I just got a blank window. A few people in the Nim discord had had the same problem and nobody could figure it out.

I don't want to take a picture because I already wrote in the book and I don't want people to see my handwriting. But here is some verbatim text from that single page:

>In this chapter we will show the basics of Nim language

needs a "the" before Nim

>(types, for loops, if and case statements, procedures, etc.) while using basic graphic primitives to create shapes

needs a comma after the close parenthesis

>The premise is that the `putPixel` proc exists and we can use it, ...

"proc" is a nonstandard technical term that has not been defined properly yet

>All we need to know is: that proc takes the x and y coordinate of a point ...

colon should not be there, and it needs a "the" before "proc"

In and of themselves these are fairly minor problems, but the whole book is like this. All are forgivable in say, a blog post, but this is a book I paid good money for. It's shoddy work, evincing a lack of care. Not to mention, the print quality is poor.

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

#254

Post by mikebenfield »

lamontcg wrote: post #96
mikebenfield wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree entirely. Ideally there should be one valid way to format your code, and robust tools to make that formatting happen automatically. Allowing alternatives yields zero benefit and causes pointless debates and diffs.

> causes pointless debates yes, having languages establish an immutable standard for tabs vs spaces has clearly ended all debate over them.

But it actually kind of has ended this nonsense in the go community, and to a lesser extent in the rust community.

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

#255

Post by poulpy123 »

_dain_ wrote: post #253
poulpy123 wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

can you post a picture of the page ? I'm curious now

Actually I just double checked and it turns out I misremembered; it does tell you how to install the library. But it didn't work properly when I tried to run it, I just got a blank window. A few people in the Nim discord had had the same problem and nobody could figure it out. I don't want to take a picture because I already wrote in the book and I don't want people to see my handwriting. But here is some verbatim te…

Ok thanks

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

#256

Post by lamontcg »

aquariusDue wrote: post #219
lamontcg wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I'm done with the trolls here.

I never understood the pearl clutching going on when people hear that Rust has different constructs for handling errors and control flow and if/else stuff is kinda an antipattern. Same kind of people that would hold dear GOTO statements in my opinion.

Well the responses here are just a little bit more conviction that I'm on the right path with Rust.

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

#257

Post by za3faran »

lenkite wrote: post #187
winrid wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I wrote an equivalent service in Java and Nim, and I just couldn't get Nim to perform as well as Java, and it wasn't even easy to write. Random segfaults, depending on memory manager used, random libraries requiring different memory managers, ORC being talked about a lot despite causing random segfaults, and so on. I really want to love Nim.

Author's take on Java is really funny. "..the JVM's largesse isn't aging particularly well. It will die with my generation's retirement." I call this fundamental blindness considering the JVM is improving dramatically year after year - now even supports lightweight concurrency like Go in 2022. Java will still be alive and kicking when no one alive even remembers Nim.

Good points. People also seem to forget that the JVM's introspection and monitoring capabilities are second to none.

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

#258

Post by jopython »

firesloth wrote: post #110
jopython wrote: post #109

Nim does not have a native ssl and regex lib in the standard library like golang or python. These libraries are taken for granted nowadays.

It doesn't? https://nim-lang.org/docs/re.html and https://nim-lang.org/docs/net.html are part of nim's standard library. Are they missing something you expect?

They are dependent on pcre and openssl respectively unlike Golang which is native.

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

#260

Post by Cyph0n »

aussiesnack wrote: post #252
Cyph0n wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nowhere did I say or even imply that people are “lazy or misguided” for not learning Rust.

Well I didn't see another way to gloss your question: > would it really be too expensive to invest some time to learn it? I'm entirely happy to take your word that I've misinterpreted the question. Back-and-forth in comments about intended meaning is rarely useful. So my apologies. But the general attitude in the Rust community (of which I have no idea whether or not you're a part) absolutely is "Rust is not hard, an…

The context for that question is important: OP had a set of requirements and Rust seemed to meet them. I’d personally consider investing time to learn technology X if I found out it met my requirements. This is not a Rust-specific thing.

I agree that Rust is not simple to learn. There is a definite learning curve involved, especially at the start. I hope your experience with the community and the language improves going forward.

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