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Show HN: “Nim in Action” is now available

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Re: Show HN: “Nim in Action” is now available

#31

Post by pathsjs »

dom96 wrote: post #15
AsyncAwait wrote: post #8

Great to see Nim getting an official book, (Dominick is almost like a co-author of Nim at this point :-). My impression of Nim is that it is what Go should have been, if language developments of the past 40 years were taken into account, so if you like the simplicity of Go's syntax, but want modern features, seriously consider Nim. I personally couldn't get over the significant whitespace, (relying on invisible chara…

Thank you for the kind words! I'm happy that you can see the positives in Nim even though you dislike one of its most prominent features. Personally I love significant whitespace and have started using Nim because of this feature, basically back in the day I just wanted a Python alternative that was compiled. If you really dislike it that much, you may be able to convince Araq to bring back his old time idea of allow…

What is `nim pretty`? I tried it, but it does not exist in current devel

Re: Show HN: “Nim in Action” is now available

#32

Post by nickpsecurity »

EugeneOZ wrote: post #23
gokr wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nim compiles to very efficient C or C++ (or js) and most benchmarks shows Nim programs performance being almost the exact same as C/C++ - and often better than Rust. So... why not using it to replace C and C++? Since I have worked with Nim (and I use it to implement my own language) I would say "hell yes"! It is such an immensely better language and it integrates perfectly with those eco systems. The GC is a good one…

Insulting people before they even had chance to say something, is very rude.

It didn't come off as an insult to me. Anyone saying C++ or Nim tends to result in a counter from pcwalton. He usually says similar things as he has a consistent stance. Countering such a stance before they speak is OK given you already know what it is. In in a moral sense anyway.

However, that he stopped in his own comment to bring it up and drop a counter says more about him than pcwalton. Shows a strong bias for and protectiveness of Nim while also disregarding the entire reliability or security aspects of the language. That's really something for a C++ alternative given its safety focus. ;)

Re: Show HN: “Nim in Action” is now available

#33

Post by patates »

EugeneOZ wrote: post #22
k__ wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have the feeling, that "in the wild" most people replace JavaScript (Node.js), Python and Ruby with Go. Rust seems to be more of a C/C++ replacement.

I replaced PHP with Rust and very happy about it.

may I ask, to do what? I think they don't claim to "be web" yet [0] and I doubt you were using PHP other than serving over http?

[0] http://arewewebyet.com/

Re: Show HN: “Nim in Action” is now available

#34

Post by nickpsecurity »

dom96 wrote: post #2

Author here! Even if you don't intend to purchase the book I would love to hear feedback from you about the first chapter (which is free!)[1]. Really excited about this book and am looking forward to any feedback at all from the HN community. 1 - https://manning-content.s3.amazonaws.com/download/6/df42fc6-...

I'll try to do that since Nim is on my list of languages to check out. Keep hearing good things about it.

Re: Show HN: “Nim in Action” is now available

#35

Post by steveklabnik »

patates wrote: post #33
EugeneOZ wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I replaced PHP with Rust and very happy about it.

may I ask, to do what? I think they don't claim to "be web" yet [0] and I doubt you were using PHP other than serving over http? [0] http://arewewebyet.com/

This website is _extremely_ outdated, please don't take it as accurate.

Re: Show HN: “Nim in Action” is now available

#38

Post by 3pt14159 »

dom96 wrote: post #2

Author here! Even if you don't intend to purchase the book I would love to hear feedback from you about the first chapter (which is free!)[1]. Really excited about this book and am looking forward to any feedback at all from the HN community. 1 - https://manning-content.s3.amazonaws.com/download/6/df42fc6-...

First chapter is good. It introduces the main concepts gently. I would have mentioned compile times, since it is one of the main draws to Go, but other than that I think the first chapter is good.

Even though I write Nim code, I still bought the book, but more so for the later chapters:

    8. INTERFACING WITH OTHER LANGUAGES
    9. METAPROGRAMMING
    10. DIRECT HARDWARE CONTROL
Since I don't have very much experience there. Also maybe a chapter on debugging might help, especially for people that are coming from Python or Ruby.

Best of luck with the rest of the writing!

Re: Show HN: “Nim in Action” is now available

#39

Post by nickpsecurity »

gokr wrote: post #26
Ygg2 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And before pcwalton drops in with his endless spamming about Nim not being safe, Nim being undefined Well, it is, isn't it? Is he wrong about Nim not being safe when not using Boehm GC? Does it not segfault when sending GC pointers between threads? He only jumps in, when someone claims Nim is safe or the sweet spot, or something equally wrong. Nim's pretty syntax comes with a price, just like Rust's safety comes wi…

About safe/undefined etc I think it has been answered before (there are probably more places): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9643690 Personally I am quite sick and tired of that particular "take" on Nim - why not for once criticize other parts of the language? :)

Thanks for the link. The top comment's explanation, esp on GC, makes a lot of sense. Both specific keywords and a module-level declaration are rational ways of handling it. So long as it's clear to a person or program analyzing safety properties of a module then they can do what they need to do.
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