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NimConf 2026: Dates Announced, Registrations Open

nim-lang.org

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Re: NimConf 2026: Dates Announced, Registrations Open

#21

Post by throwaway27448 »

ModernMech wrote: post #9
elcritch wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Combine that most CS students learn many languages with LLMs and coding agents and the size of the ecosystem isn't quite as important as it used to be. New hires can be productive from day 1. Missing libraries are relatively easy to add. Moreover the language characteristics can be more useful than ever: fast running, fast compiling, typed, easy to read, etc.

Yeah I think LLMs really help with the chicken-egg situation in language adoption. Contrary to many opinions that predict programming homogenizing around the big 3 languages that exist today (because that's what the LLMs currently write) I think in the future more nice languages will gain adoption as they are written by LLMs, who as you note don't care about a lack of community surrounding those langs -- if they need…

Python at least has type annotations these days, even if they aren't enforced.

Re: NimConf 2026: Dates Announced, Registrations Open

#22

Post by zareith »

I like the nim language, but the lack of interfaces has been a bit of a turn-off for me.

Do nim programmers not see the need for abstracting out behavior in a manner that different implementations can be switched somewhere else, or is there different idiomatic way to handle this?

Re: NimConf 2026: Dates Announced, Registrations Open

#23

Post by digdugdirk »

elcritch wrote: post #3

I should give a talk. About what however? I’ve been happy with my progress on FigDraw (1), a 2D UI scene renderer using SDFs. Even made my own neovim ui shell with it! 1: https://github.com/elcritch/figdraw

Oooo... That looks like it could make a great talk! Do you have examples of the neovim ui shell?

Re: NimConf 2026: Dates Announced, Registrations Open

#24

Post by tinfoilhatter »

zareith wrote: post #22

I like the nim language, but the lack of interfaces has been a bit of a turn-off for me. Do nim programmers not see the need for abstracting out behavior in a manner that different implementations can be switched somewhere else, or is there different idiomatic way to handle this?

Nim doesn't have interfaces, but concepts + parametric polymorphism gets you a long way - https://jasonbeetham.ca/writeups/codereuse.html

Re: NimConf 2026: Dates Announced, Registrations Open

#25

Post by michaelsbradley »

pjmlp wrote: post #18
dhruv3006 wrote: post #2

Nim seems to be picking up a lot lately.

It is another niche language looking for a project to kick off adoption.

The creator has been consistently clear in his take on "Why Nim?" It's a general purpose systems programming language, favoring procedural style, that's superior (or aims to be) in a variety of ways compared to whatever else you've been using. Hubris? Maybe.

In practice, it's turned out to be an "expert's tool" that's more expressive-convenient than C/++ to do all manner of things in the realm of systems programming, from embedded to HPC. And it's got great C/++ interop, so you can continue to leverage those software ecosystems.

In that respect, I'd say the biggest boon, rather than a killer project, would be for a famous programmer or shop to publicly and loudly adopt it as their everyday language, shouting its name for several years and saying things like "Wish we had started using this years ago, would have been so much better, look at all of these great apps and libraries we've been able to create and maintain more easily than if we'd stuck with C/++/Go/Rust/Swift!"

Re: NimConf 2026: Dates Announced, Registrations Open

#26

Post by nick__m »

zareith wrote: post #22

I like the nim language, but the lack of interfaces has been a bit of a turn-off for me. Do nim programmers not see the need for abstracting out behavior in a manner that different implementations can be switched somewhere else, or is there different idiomatic way to handle this?

The concepts feature of Nim really looks like what your looking for https://nim-lang.org/docs/manual.html#concepts

Re: NimConf 2026: Dates Announced, Registrations Open

#27

Post by pjmlp »

michaelsbradley wrote: post #25
pjmlp wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is another niche language looking for a project to kick off adoption.

The creator has been consistently clear in his take on "Why Nim?" It's a general purpose systems programming language, favoring procedural style, that's superior (or aims to be) in a variety of ways compared to whatever else you've been using. Hubris? Maybe. In practice, it's turned out to be an "expert's tool" that's more expressive-convenient than C/++ to do all manner of things in the realm of systems programming,…

You could have written the same about D, Haxe, Roc, or any other language in this space.

Every year millions of university students design new languages across the globe on their compiler classes.

To productise any of them, there is a whole ecosystem that needs to be added on top, editors, graphical debugging, packages, AI tooling....

Re: NimConf 2026: Dates Announced, Registrations Open

#28

Post by moigagoo »

zareith wrote: post #22

I like the nim language, but the lack of interfaces has been a bit of a turn-off for me. Do nim programmers not see the need for abstracting out behavior in a manner that different implementations can be switched somewhere else, or is there different idiomatic way to handle this?

We use custom types for that usually, optionally with parametric polymorphism.

But as others said already, Nimony (codename for the next Nim iteration) introduces revamped concepts which should be even more convenient.

Re: NimConf 2026: Dates Announced, Registrations Open

#30

Post by pjmlp »

ModernMech wrote: post #9
elcritch wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Combine that most CS students learn many languages with LLMs and coding agents and the size of the ecosystem isn't quite as important as it used to be. New hires can be productive from day 1. Missing libraries are relatively easy to add. Moreover the language characteristics can be more useful than ever: fast running, fast compiling, typed, easy to read, etc.

Yeah I think LLMs really help with the chicken-egg situation in language adoption. Contrary to many opinions that predict programming homogenizing around the big 3 languages that exist today (because that's what the LLMs currently write) I think in the future more nice languages will gain adoption as they are written by LLMs, who as you note don't care about a lack of community surrounding those langs -- if they need…

Python is a way, is Lisp's revenge after its AI winter dismissal.

Finally, due to AI market share pressure, JITs in Python are a real thing, after all those years of PyPy being largely ignored.

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