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Nim 1.2

nim-lang.org

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Re: Nim 1.2

#111

Post by moonduster »

DeathArrow wrote: post #108

Nim might be great. But how can a great language get traction if nobody big is behind it? Java and Python are being pushed by Silicon Valley and universities, Go is being pushed by Google, Kotlin is being pushed by Google, C# is backed by Microsoft and some big companies. Who can help Nim, or Crystal, or Rust or other new language? I look at many of them from time to time, see interesting developments, see exciting t…

Surprisingly, a lot of large companies use Rust in-house. I work at Nando's, one of our biggest systems is in Rust, and we're a chicken restaurant business, so it's not just limited to bleeding-edge SV companies.

Hoping we can open-source some of this stuff in the near future too to kind of show the world that Rust is ready.

Re: Nim 1.2

#112

Post by The_rationalist »

aganame wrote: post #100
The_rationalist wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What advantage does it bring that Kotlin hasn't?

Nim is older than Kotlin, so your question is kinda backwards. But also: 1. no JVM (Kotlin Native isn’t considered a stable thing, or is it?), 2. subjectively nicer language, 3. An optional non-GC runtime upcoming (already in there as beta), which is interesting for low-memory applications... which in the time of the Cloud is potentially any application. The more (AWS) lambda time you can get for free, the better, ri…

subjectively nicer language This is the real conversation I want to have. Everybody talk about indirections (jvm, build system, devtools) but the real interesting talk as PL enthusiasts is about the language features, semantics and syntax.

Re: Nim 1.2

#113

Post by steveklabnik »

moonduster wrote: post #111
DeathArrow wrote: post #108

Nim might be great. But how can a great language get traction if nobody big is behind it? Java and Python are being pushed by Silicon Valley and universities, Go is being pushed by Google, Kotlin is being pushed by Google, C# is backed by Microsoft and some big companies. Who can help Nim, or Crystal, or Rust or other new language? I look at many of them from time to time, see interesting developments, see exciting t…

Surprisingly, a lot of large companies use Rust in-house. I work at Nando's, one of our biggest systems is in Rust, and we're a chicken restaurant business, so it's not just limited to bleeding-edge SV companies. Hoping we can open-source some of this stuff in the near future too to kind of show the world that Rust is ready.

This is very intriguing! I hope you can too. Let me know if I can help in any way!

Re: Nim 1.2

#114

Post by rayman22201 »

MaxBarraclough wrote: post #76
sp33der89 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really doesn't! It's GC story is pretty great, because you can choose out of several GC's, one of them being good for real-time systems: https://nim-lang.org/docs/gc.html Recent versions also use this fancy thing: http://www.gii.upv.es/tlsf/

'TLSF' sounds very interesting, I'll have to keep an eye on that project. What are the reference-counting options for though, given the absence of weak references? Under what circumstances is it acceptable to permit memory-leaks in case of cycles? Short-lived processes (i.e. arena-based memory management)? When I say 'primitive GC', I mean Boehm, which is obviously decades behind the state of the art, but easy to get…

Did you see the parent comments about the new -gc:arc? It's suitable for hard real time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yA32Wxl59wo

Re: Nim 1.2

#115

Post by rayman22201 »

eigenspace wrote: post #102
dzonga wrote: post #88

hope they nim developers, port a lot of python data science tools e.g pandas, numpy etc so they can increase adoption in the language. Julia is supposed to fill that space, but feel strongly nim is better positioned

Out of curiosity, what do you feel makes Nim better positioned in this space?

As I said in another comment, the familiar python like syntax, while having the potential for much better performance.

Many data scientists are familiar with Python. They can write similar code and will run much faster by default (or with very little tweaking).

Then, if that's not fast enough, The language is positioned such that you can optimize the code to a much higher degree than you can with Python.

I'm not saying that Python code can't be optimized, but there is a limit to the speed of python code even with optimization. At some point you have to drop down to a C extension (what Numpy, Pandas, etc... does) and then you are just writing glue code in Python to drive the C. You could also use one of the Python optimized compilers, but that has limits and edge cases as well. There is "developer friction" there.

In Nim you can just have the whole program in one language. The program can be optimized to the same level as optimized C code with no special tools. This is much less friction.

What's missing is the libraries. But that will come with time.

Re: Nim 1.2

#116

Post by MaxBarraclough »

rayman22201 wrote: post #114
MaxBarraclough wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'TLSF' sounds very interesting, I'll have to keep an eye on that project. What are the reference-counting options for though, given the absence of weak references? Under what circumstances is it acceptable to permit memory-leaks in case of cycles? Short-lived processes (i.e. arena-based memory management)? When I say 'primitive GC', I mean Boehm, which is obviously decades behind the state of the art, but easy to get…

Did you see the parent comments about the new -gc:arc? It's suitable for hard real time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yA32Wxl59wo

> Reference cycles cause memory leaks, beware.

It isn't acceptable to just permit memory-leaks in case of cycles. There's no way we'd ever see something like that in a serious JVM.

Unless there's some serious machinery to provide assurances against reference cycles, of course. Which sounds like an interesting research project, come to think of it.

Re: Nim 1.2

#117

Post by klohto »

DeathArrow wrote: post #108

Nim might be great. But how can a great language get traction if nobody big is behind it? Java and Python are being pushed by Silicon Valley and universities, Go is being pushed by Google, Kotlin is being pushed by Google, C# is backed by Microsoft and some big companies. Who can help Nim, or Crystal, or Rust or other new language? I look at many of them from time to time, see interesting developments, see exciting t…

Rust is being adopted by Apple so I wouldn’t worry about it.

Re: Nim 1.2

#118

Post by ihid »

zelphirkalt wrote: post #54
intrepidhero wrote: post #26

I've been doing the nim track on exercism.io (no affiliation, just a user) for the last two weeks. The mentors on the track have been fantastic. If you're looking for a "solve a problem and get some external feedback" approach to learning the language it's pretty good.

Personally I stopped using exercism, when it started to require me to work for Google for free and would not let me log in, if I did not. It's not an ethical platform, unfortunately.

Exercism co-founder here. We get bots spamming the site in every way possible if we don't have a recaptcha. Happy to accept other suggestions for stopping bots signing up if you have any more ethical alternatives that are as an effective?

Re: Nim 1.2

#119

Post by eigenspace »

rayman22201 wrote: post #115
eigenspace wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, what do you feel makes Nim better positioned in this space?

As I said in another comment, the familiar python like syntax, while having the potential for much better performance. Many data scientists are familiar with Python. They can write similar code and will run much faster by default (or with very little tweaking). Then, if that's not fast enough, The language is positioned such that you can optimize the code to a much higher degree than you can with Python. I'm not sayi…

I guess I'm asking what you think Nim offers that julia doesn't here. Is it just syntax?

Re: Nim 1.2

#120

Post by eigenspace »

juststeve wrote: post #110
eigenspace wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, what do you feel makes Nim better positioned in this space?

arrays start at 0?

I know I shouldn't feed these sorts of trollish remarks, but if it really bothers you, you can always just use https://github.com/JuliaArrays/OffsetArrays.jl
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