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Nim (formerly Nimrod) 0.10.2 released

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Re: Nim (formerly Nimrod) 0.10.2 released

#91

Post by audunw »

wbhart wrote: post #59
themartorana wrote: post #9

All the hype on HN seems to be towards Rust and Go (with Go having its share of haters), but Nim sounds particularly interesting as a side-step from Python that runs faster than both Go and Rust. Can anyone give me some insight as to why it's not as hyped, if at all? I'm rather unfamiliar with Nim, and it's seems to have a smaller community, but it feels like it should be getting all sorts of love considering its spe…

The main reasons I think, are that Nim is not "production ready" and that other developers think of Nim as Andreas Rumpf's baby. In my opinion, this happens when a single author is responsible for most of the implementation of a language. Another example of this is the Crack language, which is still essentially controlled by one person, despite people declaring it "ready for writing useful code". Two things make non-…

While Nim has mostly been developed by Andreas, there seems to be about 3-4 people working on the compiler and standard library. I've contributed a bit myself, and I've found Andreas and the other developers very friendly to outside contributions.

I am very optimisitic about the Nim community, it's still small but it is open and friendly, so I think all the potential for growth is there, especially now that the compiler itself is reaching maturity

Re: Nim (formerly Nimrod) 0.10.2 released

#92

Post by eternalban »

klibertp wrote: post #36
themartorana wrote: post #9

All the hype on HN seems to be towards Rust and Go (with Go having its share of haters), but Nim sounds particularly interesting as a side-step from Python that runs faster than both Go and Rust. Can anyone give me some insight as to why it's not as hyped, if at all? I'm rather unfamiliar with Nim, and it's seems to have a smaller community, but it feels like it should be getting all sorts of love considering its spe…

Actually it's being hyped that's weird. There are literally dozens of very interesting languages being created and developed right now and I bet you don't know of any of them. The only - and they are very few in comparison - languages which are being hyped since very early in their life cycle are the ones backed by corporations. Both Rust and Go are such languages and that's basically it. "Normal" languages live on a…

| Actually it's being hyped that's weird. |

The economic realities of software development require disposable human resources.

Re: Nim (formerly Nimrod) 0.10.2 released

#93

Post by bluecalm »

ebbv wrote: post #41
dom96 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As far as more details of what I don't like about Nim, that would have been easy to ask directly; I find the syntax of: > echo("Hello world!") Would you prefer System.out.println("Hello world!"); instead? > I far prefer the set of cases to be indented from the case statement itself. You can in fact do that, it is however optional. > And the "in" on each line is redundant cruft. Not sure what you mean here. "in" is…

> Would you prefer System.out.println("Hello world!"); instead? This is why I didn't get into details originally because I knew I would get this kind of response. You know full well that's exactly the opposite of what I mean. You're being an asshole for no reason. > Not sure what you mean here. "in" is only used in for loops. I meant the "of"s, of course.

It's really not easy to guess what you meant as you can see from number of people who responded to your comment with their guesses. Maybe you don't a function call or maybe like semi-colons or you don't like double quotes for a string...

Re: Nim (formerly Nimrod) 0.10.2 released

#94

Post by JasonFruit »

sanxiyn wrote: post #52
JasonFruit wrote: post #50

So far, Nim has passed the most basic test for me: it installs according to instructions and compiles its own example code. I'm always baffled by the number of language releases that don't reliably do that. Nim looks like a worthwhile language, and I'm looking forward to learning it.

Good for you! When I tried the test last week, the installation instruction was outdated, so that became my first contribution to Nim. :) I suspect most of your baffling cases are simply the case of outdated documentation.

Right — and that's what baffles me. If you want people to adopt your language, you certainly want to have your documentation of the very first step be complete and up-to-date. Thank you for making sure that is the case with Nim.

Re: Nim (formerly Nimrod) 0.10.2 released

#95

Post by burntsushi »

ebbv wrote: post #33
vbit wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Care to give an example of a language you find beautiful?

First, I have never and probably would never use the word "beautiful" to describe any code. I purposefully chose "clean and nice" in my last comment. As far as the new crop of languages go, I think Rust and Go both offer better refinements of older languages than Nim does. If you're going to come out with a new language, the syntax of it should be cleaner and easier to read than what you are replacing (in this case,…

Here's some perspective. If you had said this instead:

> Maybe it's just me but I find this language pretty clean and nice looking. And regardless of its technical disadvantages it may have, that's enough reason to use it. There are too few languages out there, and we really need more like Nim.

... I still would have down-voted you.

It's a content free comment that doesn't constructively contribute anything. It's the kind of comment I'd expect to be top-voted in an /r/programming thread.

Re: Nim (formerly Nimrod) 0.10.2 released

#96

Post by wbhart »

dom96 wrote: post #77
wbhart wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you. One needs a group of like-minded individuals who understand and agree on the core design goals, but who have individual say in what they implement. Nim isn't being designed with an inferior model, it is being designed with an inefficient model. With three or four core devs, the work goes 3-4 times faster (slight exaggeration of course). That means a language can become popular in 5 years instead of…

While Andreas is still doing most of the core development it is not true that he is still the sole developer of Nim. I am personally involved with a lot of work on the standard library and there are two others who also work on the compiler. We all have a say in the design of Nim. In addition to that I have built a lot of software for Nim programmers in Nim like for example Nimble and the Nim forum.

I was vaguely aware of this. But where are the major design decisions publicly discussed?

If you look at the Julia issue tracker, you'll see an enormous amount of discussion between and with core devs about language design decisions.

It's good to have someone primarily responsible for the compiler, someone responsible for libraries, another for GC, another for the package manager, etc. I'm not suggesting every core dev needs to be intimately involved with every line of code or design decision. It's more about how the development process feels to outsiders. After all, the question that was asked was about why Nim is not being hyped, rather than why is it not a fantastic language (it is fantastic).

It is great to hear about two other (albeit nameless) individuals working on the compiler though.

Re: Nim (formerly Nimrod) 0.10.2 released

#97

Post by Cyther606 »

daveroberts wrote: post #84
themartorana wrote: post #9

All the hype on HN seems to be towards Rust and Go (with Go having its share of haters), but Nim sounds particularly interesting as a side-step from Python that runs faster than both Go and Rust. Can anyone give me some insight as to why it's not as hyped, if at all? I'm rather unfamiliar with Nim, and it's seems to have a smaller community, but it feels like it should be getting all sorts of love considering its spe…

Go and Rust and included in the Computer Language Benchmark game: http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/ Nim, and many of the other interesting languages mentioned in this thread are not. I'm not sure if this is a cause or effect.

https://github.com/def-/LPATHBench/blob/master/nim.nim

Statistics (on an x86_64 Intel Core2Quad Q9300):

    Lang    Time [ms]  Memory [KB]  Compile Time [ms]  Compressed Code [B]
    Nim          1400         1460                893                  486
    C++          1478         2717                774                  728
    D            1518         2388               1614                  669
    Rust         1623         2632               6735                  934
    Java         1874        24428                812                  778
    OCaml        2384         4496                125                  782
    Go           3116         1664                596                  618
    Haskell      3329         5268               3002                 1091
    LuaJit       3857         2368                  -                  519
    Lisp         8219        15876               1043                 1007
    Racket       8503       130284              24793                  741

Re: Nim (formerly Nimrod) 0.10.2 released

#98

Post by laumars »

wbhart wrote: post #86
daveroberts wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Go and Rust and included in the Computer Language Benchmark game: http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/ Nim, and many of the other interesting languages mentioned in this thread are not. I'm not sure if this is a cause or effect.

Not to mention, Nim still doesn't have a Wikipedia article because it is "not significant". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nim_(disambiguation)

I can't see where it says Nim (programming language) is "not significant". Maybe the reason there isn't a Wikipedia article is as simple as because nobody who has an account on Wikipedia had heard of or thought to create an article on Nim. The solution to which is quite simple, go create an article.

Re: Nim (formerly Nimrod) 0.10.2 released

#99

Post by steveklabnik »

wbhart wrote: post #72
k__ wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Design by committee is inferior (too many cooks). But most good maintainers I know listen to critique of the people who use their stuff. More devs are good for another reason than disagreeing, if one doesn't work on the code anymore, there are others who can.

I agree with you. One needs a group of like-minded individuals who understand and agree on the core design goals, but who have individual say in what they implement. Nim isn't being designed with an inferior model, it is being designed with an inefficient model. With three or four core devs, the work goes 3-4 times faster (slight exaggeration of course). That means a language can become popular in 5 years instead of…

> With three or four core devs, the work goes 3-4 times faster (slight exaggeration of course).

Fred Brooks would like a word...

More seriously, this is the important part:

> like-minded individuals who understand and agree on the core design goals,

A team who agrees on the big picture, but can work together to sort out the small details, is really important.

There's also balances between doing things quickly and doing things right. Sometimes, slowing down a bit gets you a significantly better end product. Sometimes it's just a slowdown.

Re: Nim (formerly Nimrod) 0.10.2 released

#100

Post by bronson »

ebbv wrote: post #41
dom96 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As far as more details of what I don't like about Nim, that would have been easy to ask directly; I find the syntax of: > echo("Hello world!") Would you prefer System.out.println("Hello world!"); instead? > I far prefer the set of cases to be indented from the case statement itself. You can in fact do that, it is however optional. > And the "in" on each line is redundant cruft. Not sure what you mean here. "in" is…

> Would you prefer System.out.println("Hello world!"); instead? This is why I didn't get into details originally because I knew I would get this kind of response. You know full well that's exactly the opposite of what I mean. You're being an asshole for no reason. > Not sure what you mean here. "in" is only used in for loops. I meant the "of"s, of course.

Downvoted because you've been asked for examples 3 times now and you only rant further in response. How is anybody else supposed to know what you mean? Guess correctly?

Would you rather puts instead of echo?

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