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Nim – Natively compiled language with hot code-reloading at runtime [video]

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Re: Nim – Natively compiled language with hot code-reloading at runtime [video]

#31

Post by 0815test »

jamieson-becker wrote: post #7

Nim is an amazing language. The syntax is cleaner (IMO) and easier-to-read than Go and approaches Python in its readability, which is impressive for a statically typed, compiled language[0]. The design is focused on performance above all else, but it still has metaprogramming[1] and functional features. However, Go and other languages have a huge ecosystem and many more libraries. Nim only has a few web servers/frame…

> For HNers, it's an opportunity to still make a huge difference by contributing to a relatively young language

It would be better for someone to work on an alternate, Python-like input syntax (focusing on readability and good intuition, and perhaps more attractive to novice programmers) for some established language, like Rust. Working on a "young" language, you just miss the chance of contributing to an ecosystem that's already been in development for quite some time, and where efforts aren't going to be left stranded as the bulk of the dev community chooses to go for something else.

Re: Nim – Natively compiled language with hot code-reloading at runtime [video]

#32

Post by nepeckman »

jamieson-becker wrote: post #7

Nim is an amazing language. The syntax is cleaner (IMO) and easier-to-read than Go and approaches Python in its readability, which is impressive for a statically typed, compiled language[0]. The design is focused on performance above all else, but it still has metaprogramming[1] and functional features. However, Go and other languages have a huge ecosystem and many more libraries. Nim only has a few web servers/frame…

Honestly I think Nim is more compelling as an application language than a systems language. I know there are plenty of people that care about Nim in the embedded space and are improving the experience of GC-less Nim. But for me, Nim with GC strikes a nice middle ground between speed of development and speed of execution. I can hack a project together quickly and get a native binary that executes much quicker than a scripting language. Its definitely my favorite language for hobby projects and I'm looking forward to the 1.0 release.

Re: Nim – Natively compiled language with hot code-reloading at runtime [video]

#33

Post by [deleted] »

bjourne wrote: post #15

I only skimmed the video, but I couldn't see him describing it doing type reloading. Perhaps that is what he is planning on implementing. It is very hard to implement (especially if you can't control the compiler) but very useful for general code reloading. Of course everything is relative, and even if I think it is "very hard" it might be a weekend project for someone else. Generally though, code reloading is one of…

[deleted]

Re: Nim – Natively compiled language with hot code-reloading at runtime [video]

#34

Post by jamieson-becker »

0815test wrote: post #31
jamieson-becker wrote: post #7

Nim is an amazing language. The syntax is cleaner (IMO) and easier-to-read than Go and approaches Python in its readability, which is impressive for a statically typed, compiled language[0]. The design is focused on performance above all else, but it still has metaprogramming[1] and functional features. However, Go and other languages have a huge ecosystem and many more libraries. Nim only has a few web servers/frame…

> For HNers, it's an opportunity to still make a huge difference by contributing to a relatively young language It would be better for someone to work on an alternate, Python-like input syntax (focusing on readability and good intuition, and perhaps more attractive to novice programmers) for some established language, like Rust. Working on a "young" language, you just miss the chance of contributing to an ecosystem t…

> for some established language, like Rust. Working on a "young" language, you just miss the chance of contributing to an ecosystem that's already been in development for quite some time

Would you still make this point if you were comparing...

for example, Rust and C++?

... where Rust is the "young" language? Working on such a young language (and, FWIW, Rust is younger than Nim), you might miss the chance of contributing to an ecosystem that's already been in development for quite some time.

Not every language grows up with a silver spoon from Mozilla or Google.

Re: Nim – Natively compiled language with hot code-reloading at runtime [video]

#36

Post by lispm »

jlarocco wrote: post #9
vthriller wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The answer to that would depend on the CL implementation, since not all of them can do AOT compilation.

Not really... It's in the CL standard, and compliant implementations support it. SBCL, LispWorks, Allegro, CCL, and others all do AOT native compilation, from the REPL and via eval (which should be avoided, in any case). ABCL does AOT compilation to JVM bytecode, and Clisp to its own bytecode. It's a cool feature for Nim to have, but claiming to be the first makes them look bad.

Several Lisp implementations even do similar things which were shown in the video: compiling Lisp to C/C++, then calling the C or C++ compiler, then loading the compiled code into a running Lisp, replacing/extending code.

For example ECL. The maintainer of ECL also showed how to write inline C in a Lisp function and compile/load that in a REPL - using only a couple of lines of code - basically a C REPL inside Lisp.

https://www.reddit.com/r/lisp/comments/bgwtsh/fun_ecl_hack/

Re: Nim – Natively compiled language with hot code-reloading at runtime [video]

#37

Post by steveklabnik »

0815test wrote: post #31
jamieson-becker wrote: post #7

Nim is an amazing language. The syntax is cleaner (IMO) and easier-to-read than Go and approaches Python in its readability, which is impressive for a statically typed, compiled language[0]. The design is focused on performance above all else, but it still has metaprogramming[1] and functional features. However, Go and other languages have a huge ecosystem and many more libraries. Nim only has a few web servers/frame…

> For HNers, it's an opportunity to still make a huge difference by contributing to a relatively young language It would be better for someone to work on an alternate, Python-like input syntax (focusing on readability and good intuition, and perhaps more attractive to novice programmers) for some established language, like Rust. Working on a "young" language, you just miss the chance of contributing to an ecosystem t…

https://github.com/mystor/slag

Re: Nim – Natively compiled language with hot code-reloading at runtime [video]

#38

Post by dom96 »

nepeckman wrote: post #32
jamieson-becker wrote: post #7

Nim is an amazing language. The syntax is cleaner (IMO) and easier-to-read than Go and approaches Python in its readability, which is impressive for a statically typed, compiled language[0]. The design is focused on performance above all else, but it still has metaprogramming[1] and functional features. However, Go and other languages have a huge ecosystem and many more libraries. Nim only has a few web servers/frame…

Honestly I think Nim is more compelling as an application language than a systems language. I know there are plenty of people that care about Nim in the embedded space and are improving the experience of GC-less Nim. But for me, Nim with GC strikes a nice middle ground between speed of development and speed of execution. I can hack a project together quickly and get a native binary that executes much quicker than a s…

Couldn't agree with you more here. I personally use Nim as an application language too and it will take a lot of convincing to let me go of the precious GC :)

Re: Nim – Natively compiled language with hot code-reloading at runtime [video]

#39

Post by vram22 »

ungzd wrote: post #19

I remember using "edit and continue" in Visual C++ 6, seems that this feature still exists in newer versions[1], but I don't know what limitations it has. [1] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/debugger/edit-...

I had been exploring Lisp (in particular, Franz's Allegro Lisp and LispWorks Lisp) some years ago, and around the same time, came across the "edit and continue" feature in Visual C++ / Visual Studio (may have been 6 or other version). IIRC I blogged or tweeted about both, and that maybe that VC++ feature was inspired by something similar in Lisp.
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