I do feel Nim embraces mutation more than other recent languages.
https://github.com/sergiotapia/torrentinim
Nim is a very interesting language, with a lot of upsides. It just needs that killer framework to get the ball rolling and allow devs to solve business needs quickly. Once that's done I think Nim will grow a lot! Tiny binaries, static binaries, fast, low memory usage, macros, compiles to C.
Recent versions also use this fancy thing: http://www.gii.upv.es/tlsf/
In addition there is active work on a swift like reference counting, lifetime based memory management option. This will be suitable for hard real-time use cases.
Java and Python are being pushed by Silicon Valley and universities, Go is being pushed by Google, Kotlin is being pushed by Google, C# is backed by Microsoft and some big companies.
Who can help Nim, or Crystal, or Rust or other new language?
I look at many of them from time to time, see interesting developments, see exciting things but I refuse to learn the languages, their ecosystem and frameworks from the fear I have I will lose lots of valuable time since I might not be able to earn my living using them.
Hoping we can open-source some of this stuff in the near future too to kind of show the world that Rust is ready.
Being a grassroot, community-driven project is a feature, not a bug.
However, I certainly agree with your "you do this because you _care_" sentiment.
Source: implemented dark mode for an application where the "sane css colors using variables" property was true.
But the more the merrier, so I look forward to its bright future.
Also: available to hire if anyone is looking to work with Nim.
I have written UI DSLs in Nim, as well as SQL DSLs. Only LISPy languages come close to the level of DSL you can do.
You could certainly write an expressive web framework in nim, but a django/rails sort of paradigm is not the way.
Nim feels as lightweight as Go, but with great syntax. The main thing holding me back now is the lack of libraries, but it's definitely on my radar.
1. no JVM (Kotlin Native isn’t considered a stable thing, or is it?),
2. subjectively nicer language,
3. An optional non-GC runtime upcoming (already in there as beta), which is interesting for low-memory applications... which in the time of the Cloud is potentially any application. The more (AWS) lambda time you can get for free, the better, right?
4. Writing command line tools. Practically nobody is writing them on Kotlin. Everybody’s writing them on Rust, though, for some reason...
Disclaimer, full disclosure: I’ve only read about Kotlin, of course, not written a single line. It seems like an excellent language, and if I had to do JVM work, I’d have it as a top3 candidate for sure.
So useVersion doesn't simply checkout the old codebase, but they still promise to maintain all prior version's bugs? Seems like a losing battle to me... why not just tell people relying on version 1.0 behaviour to use version 1.0 and create tooling to make sure switching between versions is easy (a. la. nvm)?
The idea is more like the gcc -std flag (gcc -std=gnu++11 for example). to emulate certain versions to ease upgrading.
One bit which I still hate is simply how imports work in Nim. My project pretty much has a header like file containing function and variable signatures which can be called from other files.
For someone used to modern languages, it just feels so archaic.
But overall it is still a fantastic language and I am excited to try the ARC gc
You mean how `import` works or are you using `include`? If the latter then I would strongly discourage you from using it.
As for the former, you can use `from module import nil` everywhere if you really want.
This is my person opinion here: Nim is part of the "new generation of system programming languages" from the last decade or so. Some other examples in this category include Zig, D lang, Go lang, Swift, Rust, etc...
The whole idea is to provide "modern high level" language features and ergonomics while still producing efficient low level code.
For Pythonistas, The familiar syntax is attractive to Python programmers looking for a more performant language (data science is a prime example.)
Nim is also attractive to lispers looking to move to a more traditional Algol or C like language while still keeping much of power and flexibility that they are used to from macros.
Many data scientists are familiar with Python. They can write similar code and will run much faster by default (or with very little tweaking).
Then, if that's not fast enough, The language is positioned such that you can optimize the code to a much higher degree than you can with Python.
I'm not saying that Python code can't be optimized, but there is a limit to the speed of python code even with optimization. At some point you have to drop down to a C extension (what Numpy, Pandas, etc... does) and then you are just writing glue code in Python to drive the C. You could also use one of the Python optimized compilers, but that has limits and edge cases as well. There is "developer friction" there.
In Nim you can just have the whole program in one language. The program can be optimized to the same level as optimized C code with no special tools. This is much less friction.
What's missing is the libraries. But that will come with time.
This is the first release to offer `--gc:arc` so there are still some rough edges, but I would follow @treeform's and @rayman22201's advice from sibling comments: give it a try, it might work for you without any problems, and if not - report it.
The long-term plan is to make it the default.
These comments make a lot more sense now.
A. Where are you that you are not already at home??
And B. I wonder how many people are using nim at work, and what sort of workplaces that might be?
