Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Nim 1.4

nim-lang.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 144 posts

Re: Nim 1.4

#21

Post by adamc »

mumblemumble wrote: post #16
djur wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you missed this detail: > ARC was first shipped with Nim 1.2... [ORC is] our main new feature for this release Seems like they should phrase it like "use ORC unless you know you don't have cycles" rather than "use ORC if you're not sure you have cycles", but that's a reasonable responsibility to take on if you're choosing to use an alternative garbage collector.

I'd prefer no phrasing at all. Just pick one that will work well in all cases, and don't give me any footguns.

Yes. Or at least put them in the appendix.

Re: Nim 1.4

#22

Post by MaxBarraclough »

Tiberium wrote: post #5
Boxxed wrote: post #3

There are a lot of gotchas with the new GC that make me nervous about this release: > As far as we know, ARC works with the complete standard library except for the current implementation of async... That's not a great endorsement... > If your code uses cyclic data structures, or if you’re not sure if your code produces cycles, you need to use --gc:orc and not --gc:arc. Seems like this is a big onus to put on the use…

Sorry if you got misled by the article - ORC is what you should use if your program has cycles. ORC deals with async just fine.

Does ORC stand for something?

Re: Nim 1.4

#23

Post by cb321 »

MaxBarraclough wrote: post #22
Tiberium wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry if you got misled by the article - ORC is what you should use if your program has cycles. ORC deals with async just fine.

Does ORC stand for something?

I could be wrong, but I believe the acronyms are: ARC = Automatic Reference Counting (NOTE: not Atomic) ORC = Optimized Reference Counting

The loopy/circular character of the letter 'O' may be a secondary mnemonic since it collects cycles.

Re: Nim 1.4

#25

Post by judofyr »

mumblemumble wrote: post #16
djur wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you missed this detail: > ARC was first shipped with Nim 1.2... [ORC is] our main new feature for this release Seems like they should phrase it like "use ORC unless you know you don't have cycles" rather than "use ORC if you're not sure you have cycles", but that's a reasonable responsibility to take on if you're choosing to use an alternative garbage collector.

I'd prefer no phrasing at all. Just pick one that will work well in all cases, and don't give me any footguns.

To clarify: By default Nim will still use the GC which doesn't have any "footguns". ARC and ORC are new features which have different trade-offs, and some limitations. You opt-in to using them if you're interested.

Re: Nim 1.4

#26

Post by gameswithgo »

mumblemumble wrote: post #16
djur wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you missed this detail: > ARC was first shipped with Nim 1.2... [ORC is] our main new feature for this release Seems like they should phrase it like "use ORC unless you know you don't have cycles" rather than "use ORC if you're not sure you have cycles", but that's a reasonable responsibility to take on if you're choosing to use an alternative garbage collector.

I'd prefer no phrasing at all. Just pick one that will work well in all cases, and don't give me any footguns.

A way of dealing with memory that works well in all cases! That would be great.

Re: Nim 1.4

#27

Post by pietroppeter »

yitchelle wrote: post #24

I am intrigued by Nim. Anyone know of the motivation for Nim? I was not able to find that out in their website.

From this nice interview with Araq (language creator): http://157.245.209.254/andreas-rumpf-on-creating-and-growing...

> I started the Nim project after an unsuccessful search for a good systems programming language. Back then (2006) there were essentially two lines of systems programming languages:

> The C (C, C++, Objective C) family of languages.

> The Pascal (Pascal, Modula 2, Modula 3, Ada, Oberon) family of languages.

> The C-family of languages has quirky syntax, grossly unsafe semantics and slow compilers but is overall quite flexible to use. This is mostly thanks to its meta-programming features like the preprocessor and, in C++'s case, to templates.

> The Pascal family of languages has an unpleasant, overly verbose syntax but fast compilers. It also has stronger type systems and extensive runtime checks make it far safer to use. However, it lacks most of the metaprogramming capabilities that I wanted to see in a language.

> For some reason, neither family looked at Lisp to take inspiration from its macro system, which is a very nice fit for systems programming as a macro system pushes complexity from runtime to compile-time.

> And neither family looked much at the upcoming scripting languages like Python or Ruby which focussed on usability and making programmers more productive. Back then these attributes were ascribed to their usage of dynamic typing, but if you looked closely, most of their nice attributes were independent of dynamic typing.

> So that's why I had to create Nim; there was a hole in the programming language landscape for a systems programming language that took Ada's strong type system and safety aspects, Lisp's metaprogramming system so that the Nim programmer can operate on the level of abstraction that suits the problem domain and a language that uses Python's readable but concise syntax.

Re: Nim 1.4

#28

Post by karmakaze »

Boxxed wrote: post #3

There are a lot of gotchas with the new GC that make me nervous about this release: > As far as we know, ARC works with the complete standard library except for the current implementation of async... That's not a great endorsement... > If your code uses cyclic data structures, or if you’re not sure if your code produces cycles, you need to use --gc:orc and not --gc:arc. Seems like this is a big onus to put on the use…

I'm not familiar with Nim. Does it also support weak references?

A significant portion of the problems with cycles in ARC are parent references.

Re: Nim 1.4

#29

Post by pietroppeter »

pietroppeter wrote: post #27
yitchelle wrote: post #24

I am intrigued by Nim. Anyone know of the motivation for Nim? I was not able to find that out in their website.

From this nice interview with Araq (language creator): http://157.245.209.254/andreas-rumpf-on-creating-and-growing... > I started the Nim project after an unsuccessful search for a good systems programming language. Back then (2006) there were essentially two lines of systems programming languages: > The C (C, C++, Objective C) family of languages. > The Pascal (Pascal, Modula 2, Modula 3, Ada, Oberon) family of lan…

Also relevant this other interview (video), a bit more recent: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9SGIB946lw

Re: Nim 1.4

#30

Post by [deleted] »

judofyr wrote: post #25
mumblemumble wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd prefer no phrasing at all. Just pick one that will work well in all cases, and don't give me any footguns.

To clarify: By default Nim will still use the GC which doesn't have any "footguns". ARC and ORC are new features which have different trade-offs, and some limitations. You opt-in to using them if you're interested.

[deleted]
Post reply on HN