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Patten Matching in Nim

nim-lang.org

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Re: Patten Matching in Nim

#21

Post by cb321 »

gilrain wrote: post #20
tiffanyh wrote: post #18

NIM seems like this unicorn of a language of having great performance, amazing balance between being both high-level and low-level, extremely approachable due to syntax ... yet very few have actual discovered and use NIM. I wonder why.

In my case, I actually prefer my languages to be more opinionated. Nim implements just about every paradigm it can think of, and if there are multiple ways to implement a paradigm, it implements them all. It feels like a sophomore college student who keeps switching majors. Some people prefer "There is Only One Way to Do It" languages. Some people prefer "There is More Than One Way to Do It" languages. Nim is more li…

Nim is a very flexible language where things that would, in almost any other language (besides Lisp/Racket/etc) require direct compiler support (like async/coloring) can be done as libraries.

Consequently, people disagreeing the way they do in their opinions, even if there were not seven ways to do something in the core language/stdlib, libraries would add those ways. So, the ecosystem would still have them all and more (eventually).

Personal opinion, but I would say Nim is remarkable in being able to support & manage all this diversity. One does not see Nim style guides like C++ style guides where you are only supposed to use the 5..10% or whatever of the specified language that everyone on a team understands, for example. { Yet! Famous last words... :-) }

Re: Patten Matching in Nim

#22

Post by RcouF1uZ4gsC »

tiffanyh wrote: post #18

NIM seems like this unicorn of a language of having great performance, amazing balance between being both high-level and low-level, extremely approachable due to syntax ... yet very few have actual discovered and use NIM. I wonder why.

One of my knocks against it is using white space for scoping/blocks a la Python.

While it may be great for beginners or for short scripts, over time it becomes a real pain when refactoring. Editors mess up indentation all the time when copying and pasting. You only have to inadvertently make a statement either incorrectly part of, or not part of an if a few times, before you become leery of that choice.

Re: Patten Matching in Nim

#23

Post by galfarragem »

tiffanyh wrote: post #18

NIM seems like this unicorn of a language of having great performance, amazing balance between being both high-level and low-level, extremely approachable due to syntax ... yet very few have actual discovered and use NIM. I wonder why.

Easy: no killer app nor big corps support.

According to Wikipedia it started in 2008 and is still very alive. It's a good sign.

Re: Patten Matching in Nim

#24

Post by nepeckman »

tiffanyh wrote: post #18

NIM seems like this unicorn of a language of having great performance, amazing balance between being both high-level and low-level, extremely approachable due to syntax ... yet very few have actual discovered and use NIM. I wonder why.

I think network effects have a lot to do with it. If a language has a small ecosystem, it's less attractive for new developers, so the ecosystem stays small. That said, I think the Nim ecosystem might be able to achieve a critical mass of useful libraries soon and break out of that cycle. There's been a lot of good work done in the UI and web domains in the past year, which is such a large market that even capturing a small portion would bring a lot of developers into the ecosystem.

Re: Patten Matching in Nim

#25

Post by pietroppeter »

gilrain wrote: post #20
tiffanyh wrote: post #18

NIM seems like this unicorn of a language of having great performance, amazing balance between being both high-level and low-level, extremely approachable due to syntax ... yet very few have actual discovered and use NIM. I wonder why.

In my case, I actually prefer my languages to be more opinionated. Nim implements just about every paradigm it can think of, and if there are multiple ways to implement a paradigm, it implements them all. It feels like a sophomore college student who keeps switching majors. Some people prefer "There is Only One Way to Do It" languages. Some people prefer "There is More Than One Way to Do It" languages. Nim is more li…

Nim seems pretty opinionated to me: use imperative style, minimal or none OOP (preference for macro built DSLs over OOP), functional allowed for those who like it.

Also looking code around I think style and usage is pretty consistent and Nim idiomatic code is certainly a thing. Overall I think it is a definitely consistent language. It is definitely evolving but you can go a long (loong way) with 1.0 features.

I also believe “there is only on way to do it” is more of a slogan/goal than a real thing.

Re: Patten Matching in Nim

#26

Post by cb321 »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #22
tiffanyh wrote: post #18

NIM seems like this unicorn of a language of having great performance, amazing balance between being both high-level and low-level, extremely approachable due to syntax ... yet very few have actual discovered and use NIM. I wonder why.

One of my knocks against it is using white space for scoping/blocks a la Python. While it may be great for beginners or for short scripts, over time it becomes a real pain when refactoring. Editors mess up indentation all the time when copying and pasting. You only have to inadvertently make a statement either incorrectly part of, or not part of an if a few times, before you become leery of that choice.

Whitespace as syntax is a somewhat controversial choice. Others will talk about missing semi-colon bugs or other delimiter-not-matching-whitespace bugs. Their counter "You only have to mis-indent an if relative to semi-colons once to be leery of that choice."

Most of the time (more often than Python), you can use parentheses if you really want. Getting everyone else on your team to stick to that formatting convention..maybe not so easy because, well, not everyone shares your opinion/values. :-)

Re: Patten Matching in Nim

#27

Post by afavour »

tiffanyh wrote: post #18

NIM seems like this unicorn of a language of having great performance, amazing balance between being both high-level and low-level, extremely approachable due to syntax ... yet very few have actual discovered and use NIM. I wonder why.

I tried out Nim. My first reaction was that I absolutely loved it. Second reaction was when I needed to look up how to do something and I realised that the docs aren't amazing. Third reaction was when I first ran into a problem I couldn't find anything on Google, and had to post on the Nim forums. The forums were great but there's an inevitable time lag between posting and getting a response.

Then I started looking at Rust. For my purposes, first reaction to Rust was that I hated it. Borrow checker, lifetimes, all the stuff everyone complains about. But once I got over the initial bump it ticked all of the above boxes that Nim didn't, and I ended up appreciating the guardrails it provides around safety that Nim doesn't (or didn't, a lot has happened with garbage collection etc. since I last looked).

If I had more free time in life I'd absolutely be making side projects in Nim.

Re: Patten Matching in Nim

#28

Post by wilsonthewhale »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #22
tiffanyh wrote: post #18

NIM seems like this unicorn of a language of having great performance, amazing balance between being both high-level and low-level, extremely approachable due to syntax ... yet very few have actual discovered and use NIM. I wonder why.

One of my knocks against it is using white space for scoping/blocks a la Python. While it may be great for beginners or for short scripts, over time it becomes a real pain when refactoring. Editors mess up indentation all the time when copying and pasting. You only have to inadvertently make a statement either incorrectly part of, or not part of an if a few times, before you become leery of that choice.

Personally, I'm skeptical of the "great for beginners" point. I've helped a few beginners in Python who had subtle, yet program-breaking bugs just because their return statement was indented to the wrong level. It would have been easier to just use a brace-delimited language and run the autoformatter to reveal any discrepancies.

(Or we could be using a lisp, but that's another problem :) )

Re: Patten Matching in Nim

#29

Post by eeZah7Ux »

tiffanyh wrote: post #18

NIM seems like this unicorn of a language of having great performance, amazing balance between being both high-level and low-level, extremely approachable due to syntax ... yet very few have actual discovered and use NIM. I wonder why.

It's written "Nim"

Re: Patten Matching in Nim

#30

Post by boogies »

afavour wrote: post #27
tiffanyh wrote: post #18

NIM seems like this unicorn of a language of having great performance, amazing balance between being both high-level and low-level, extremely approachable due to syntax ... yet very few have actual discovered and use NIM. I wonder why.

I tried out Nim. My first reaction was that I absolutely loved it. Second reaction was when I needed to look up how to do something and I realised that the docs aren't amazing. Third reaction was when I first ran into a problem I couldn't find anything on Google, and had to post on the Nim forums. The forums were great but there's an inevitable time lag between posting and getting a response. Then I started looking a…

> The forums were great but there's an inevitable time lag between posting and getting a response.

FWIW the core devs and many others are present on the #nim channel on Freenode with bridges to Discord, Gitter, and (non-Gitter) Matrix.

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