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Nim (formerly Nimrod) 0.10.2 released

nim-lang.org

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Re: Nim (formerly Nimrod) 0.10.2 released

#31

Post by melling »

themartorana wrote: post #9

All the hype on HN seems to be towards Rust and Go (with Go having its share of haters), but Nim sounds particularly interesting as a side-step from Python that runs faster than both Go and Rust. Can anyone give me some insight as to why it's not as hyped, if at all? I'm rather unfamiliar with Nim, and it's seems to have a smaller community, but it feels like it should be getting all sorts of love considering its spe…

By hype, do you mean fewer people using it? Can't really submit articles and projects for Nim that don't exist. If you like the language, why not write something in it then blog about it?

Re: Nim (formerly Nimrod) 0.10.2 released

#32

Post by vbit »

simias wrote: post #28
themartorana wrote: post #9

All the hype on HN seems to be towards Rust and Go (with Go having its share of haters), but Nim sounds particularly interesting as a side-step from Python that runs faster than both Go and Rust. Can anyone give me some insight as to why it's not as hyped, if at all? I'm rather unfamiliar with Nim, and it's seems to have a smaller community, but it feels like it should be getting all sorts of love considering its spe…

For me the feature that makes Rust stand out is memory safety without garbage collection. It's got all the goodness you'd expect from a modern programming language while giving me basically all the flexibility I could get from writing C or C++. That's a very strong differencing trait, at least for me. I've never used Nim and I should probably give it a try but it seems that the "garbage collected, parallel oriented"…

There is nothing quite like Nim in the other languages you mention. Nim's GC is different than most of the others and you can also control it so it only runs for a certain amount of time. Nim is also very expressive and clean. The meta-programming capabilities are fantastic. Its overhead is significantly lower than the JVM and it is cross platform (unlike .net).

Re: Nim (formerly Nimrod) 0.10.2 released

#33

Post by ebbv »

vbit wrote: post #30
ebbv wrote: post #27

Maybe it's just me but I find this language pretty ugly. And regardless of any technical advantages it may offer, that's enough reason to not use it. There's too many languages out there to come out with a new one where the code isn't clean and nice.

Care to give an example of a language you find beautiful?

First, I have never and probably would never use the word "beautiful" to describe any code. I purposefully chose "clean and nice" in my last comment.

As far as the new crop of languages go, I think Rust and Go both offer better refinements of older languages than Nim does. If you're going to come out with a new language, the syntax of it should be cleaner and easier to read than what you are replacing (in this case, seemingly C/C++/Java) or there's not much point.

But ultimately this is personal preference, which is why I worded my comment that way. Instead of people simply disagreeing they have so far down voted me to -3 and counting. HN is overrun with a groupthink mob lately. I have tested this on a number of occasions posting comments that I knew were pandering to the mob, and today posting one I thought probably would go against the grain and the results are totally predictable. It's very sad.

Re: Nim (formerly Nimrod) 0.10.2 released

#34

Post by andybak »

ebbv wrote: post #27

Maybe it's just me but I find this language pretty ugly. And regardless of any technical advantages it may offer, that's enough reason to not use it. There's too many languages out there to come out with a new one where the code isn't clean and nice.

Interesting. I came here to say pretty much the opposite.

Can you elaborate?

Re: Nim (formerly Nimrod) 0.10.2 released

#36

Post by klibertp »

themartorana wrote: post #9

All the hype on HN seems to be towards Rust and Go (with Go having its share of haters), but Nim sounds particularly interesting as a side-step from Python that runs faster than both Go and Rust. Can anyone give me some insight as to why it's not as hyped, if at all? I'm rather unfamiliar with Nim, and it's seems to have a smaller community, but it feels like it should be getting all sorts of love considering its spe…

Actually it's being hyped that's weird. There are literally dozens of very interesting languages being created and developed right now and I bet you don't know of any of them. The only - and they are very few in comparison - languages which are being hyped since very early in their life cycle are the ones backed by corporations. Both Rust and Go are such languages and that's basically it.

"Normal" languages live on a different time scale: it takes many years to gather enough users to even have a chance of generating a bit of hype. For most languages that moment never comes: they are good, solid languages with decades of development behind them and completely obscure and unknown. Others become well-known in certain areas while still being unfamiliar for the "general public".

Take a look at Haxe, Opa, Elixir, Cobra or Io for example. They are all very interesting (each for its own reasons), mature and productive - and completely unknown. Out of those only Elixir gets mentioned here sometimes.

Anyway, a choice of language should never be based on "hype" alone. Of course, language popularity is an important factor, but most often limiting yourself to popular languages is a case of premature optimization: it's quite likely that in your project the language popularity won't make a difference (especially in small/short-lived projects) and that "raw" language features are more important than hype. (Of course that's not always the case: bigger or long-lived projects benefit from language popularity very much, for example by having easier time finding replacements for developers who went away and so on)

Re: Nim (formerly Nimrod) 0.10.2 released

#37

Post by andybak »

ebbv wrote: post #33
vbit wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Care to give an example of a language you find beautiful?

First, I have never and probably would never use the word "beautiful" to describe any code. I purposefully chose "clean and nice" in my last comment. As far as the new crop of languages go, I think Rust and Go both offer better refinements of older languages than Nim does. If you're going to come out with a new language, the syntax of it should be cleaner and easier to read than what you are replacing (in this case,…

I'm not saying the downvote was warranted but your original comment wasn't exactly in-depth and high-quality. It was a bit lazy and off-hand. The only reason I bothered to engage with you is because I find language aesthetics fascinating and wanted to find out what your beef was.

Re: Nim (formerly Nimrod) 0.10.2 released

#38

Post by sanxiyn »

chipsy wrote: post #18
themartorana wrote: post #9

All the hype on HN seems to be towards Rust and Go (with Go having its share of haters), but Nim sounds particularly interesting as a side-step from Python that runs faster than both Go and Rust. Can anyone give me some insight as to why it's not as hyped, if at all? I'm rather unfamiliar with Nim, and it's seems to have a smaller community, but it feels like it should be getting all sorts of love considering its spe…

Rust and Go have big backers behind them. This generates a feedback loop of hype leading to toy projects and thought leadership, which subsequently turns into real adoption. If weren't for that they would be maturing at about the same rate as Nim.

Adoption is greatly helped by hype, but maturity is something different. Rust and Go have a number of paid developers working full time on the implementation. This helps maturity and is unrelated to hype.

Re: Nim (formerly Nimrod) 0.10.2 released

#39

Post by ebbv »

andybak wrote: post #37
ebbv wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, I have never and probably would never use the word "beautiful" to describe any code. I purposefully chose "clean and nice" in my last comment. As far as the new crop of languages go, I think Rust and Go both offer better refinements of older languages than Nim does. If you're going to come out with a new language, the syntax of it should be cleaner and easier to read than what you are replacing (in this case,…

I'm not saying the downvote was warranted but your original comment wasn't exactly in-depth and high-quality. It was a bit lazy and off-hand. The only reason I bothered to engage with you is because I find language aesthetics fascinating and wanted to find out what your beef was.

Brief is not the same as lazy. I personally find comments that say what they mean to say in a short amount of text much more useful than ones that go on for paragraphs without saying anything new. I strive for brevity.

I revised the one you responded to so you may want to check that now.

As far as more details of what I don't like about Nim, that would have been easy to ask directly; I find the syntax of:

echo("Hello world!")

To be outdated and ugly. I also find the case statement to be awful to read the way they've done it, I far prefer the set of cases to be indented from the case statement itself. And the "of" on each line is redundant cruft.

This is a brand new language and it holds on to what to my eyes is the worst cruft of old languages.

Re: Nim (formerly Nimrod) 0.10.2 released

#40

Post by dom96 »

ebbv wrote: post #39
andybak wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not saying the downvote was warranted but your original comment wasn't exactly in-depth and high-quality. It was a bit lazy and off-hand. The only reason I bothered to engage with you is because I find language aesthetics fascinating and wanted to find out what your beef was.

Brief is not the same as lazy. I personally find comments that say what they mean to say in a short amount of text much more useful than ones that go on for paragraphs without saying anything new. I strive for brevity. I revised the one you responded to so you may want to check that now. As far as more details of what I don't like about Nim, that would have been easy to ask directly; I find the syntax of: echo("Hello…

> As far as more details of what I don't like about Nim, that would have been easy to ask directly; I find the syntax of:

> echo("Hello world!")

Would you prefer System.out.println("Hello world!"); instead?

> I far prefer the set of cases to be indented from the case statement itself.

You can in fact do that, it is however optional.

> And the "in" on each line is redundant cruft.

Not sure what you mean here. "in" is only used in for loops.

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