I'm all for a stable platform and backwards compatibility guarantees. Who wouldn't be? Who wants their code base flipped on it's head every couple months?
But, why do they have to hit 1.0 by the end of the year? Who's the arbiter of this deadline?
I didn't mean to imply that this is an absolute. But you may have noticed a lot of 'Nim is not a new language' sentiment in this discussion. In my mind, and I may be wrong, this is largely the result of the fact that the language has been around for a very long while without hitting v1.0. This makes the group of potential users very nervous. The longer they leave this unresolved, the more likely it is that the train will leave the station without them. It seems like now is a good time for Nim, with a lot of interest, but this must be addressed. The wonderful book Nim in Action, which I recently purchased, only makes sense if 1.0 is on the horizon. Otherwise, why bother with a published book on the language? Again, this is just my opinion but I'm sure that it's shared by at least some others. It is in my view the biggest obstacle holding the language back from more widespread adoption. I want the language to succeed and that's why I press the issue.
I can agree that 1.0 is an important milestone. At least as many people seem to treat it as "not ready" until it hits this milestone. I've been using Nim for the past couple of years, and keeping up to date with the version haven't been an issue for me. But I know that the core devs are all working hard towards fixing all the major things that prevent a 1.0 release, and it will probably come soon.
My impression is that you're right; there is a good sized group of people out there that have looked at Nim briefly and thought, this is great but I'll check back in when it's "ready". It is a shame because you're also right that the language is actually quite stable in its current pre-1.0 version. I'm no language designer (not by a long shot) and have the greatest respect for Araq and Dom (and Walter from D as stated above), but at some point you need to wrap it up, ship it, build a decent sized user base and bear the fruit of having more hands to make lighter work. The devs have been working extremely hard, I can tell, and I just hope that you're right in saying 'it will probably come soon'. And no doubt they don't need me pestering them to do it any faster (apologies Dom, I don't mean to make you sweat).
