Nim Programming Language Gaining Traction

An anonymous reader writes: Nim is a young, statically typed programming language that has been getting more attention recently. See these articles for an introduction: What is special about Nim?, What makes Nim practical? and How I Start: Nim. The language offers a syntax inspired by Python and Pascal, great performance and C interfacing, and powerful metaprogramming capabilities. The author of "Unix in Rust" just abandoned Rust in favor of Nim and some early-adopter companies are starting to use it as well.

Comments

Nim's community is very toxic.

[Anonymous Coward]

I lurk on the Nim IRC channel sometimes. The toxicity there is unbelievable.

Look at these recent IRC logs, for example.

We see insults like:

17:46:17 ldlework EXetoC: the problem is that you're just spouting weightless and thoughtless generalizations about how you can whimsically avoid BlaXpirit_'s problems with magical design

19:08:33 ldlework Your justification is piss.

19:10:07 Zuchto BlaXpirit_: because ldlework is being an ass to the person that, as far as I know, is doing just that

20:14:47 Zuchto ldlework: still being an ass, I would say that that makes any high ground you try and claim about being a "good internet citizen" pretty much null and void.

And there's lots of unnecessary sarcasm:

19:54:14 ldlework "Nim supports generics and inheritance but if you want to do OOP programming, Fuck You, Nim is really a functional language because we arbitrarilly limit the language to mirror limitations in F# (which show up for compltely unrelated reasons than in Nim)

Then there's lunacy and quasi-psychotic ranting and rambling:

19:58:39 Triplefox I like the modules as they are
19:58:51 ldlework Triplefox: we're not trying to change the module system per-say
19:59:06 ldlework And, great as long as they're sufficient for you, we should all shut up
19:59:19 BlaXpirit_ damn you're good at arguments
19:59:19 ldlework Let us remember to run by all our shortcomings with Nim through Triplefox first
19:59:47 ldlework BlaXpirit_: because the actual answer here is "Oh right, just wait until forward type declarations."
19:59:58 Triplefox Uh, so you want to bully?
20:00:17 ldlework If Araq had just said that instead of taking some high-brow self-contradicting position for which he can provide no direct argumentation against, then we both would have been satisfied long ago.
20:00:26 ldlework Because that's all that needed to be said about this problem.
20:02:57 ldlework Triplefox: Uh, so you just want to sqaush other people's conversations that have no effect or bearing on you by making a wierd obersvation that you don't suffer the same difficulty as others?
20:02:59 ldlework What?
20:03:56 Triplefox Your conversation consists of forcing someone to say they're wrong
20:04:06 ldlework Nope
20:04:08 ldlework There is a problem X
20:04:14 ldlework there is a sufficient solution Y
20:04:23 ldlework But Y is purportedly bad because X shouldn't be a problem at all
20:04:31 ldlework so instead of providing a solution to X
20:04:32 ldlework we say
20:04:34 ldlework You're wrong.
20:04:37 ldlework You're thinking wrong.
20:04:40 ldlework You're a bad programmer.
20:04:42 ldlework Read this article.
20:04:56 ldlework If there was a solution as nice as Y, that we were missing, everyone here would have provided it.
20:05:03 ldlework Instead of the hand waving and high-browing.
20:05:37 Triplefox Except that you're getting a change already
20:05:45 ldlework Triplefox: right, that was my point, that's Y
20:05:55 ldlework But we just had to pointout how people who need Y are terrible programmers
20:06:06 ldlework Because there is some hidden unspoken thing you could do instead of X that would alleviate it
20:06:16 ldlework Just it seems no one can actually produce what that altnerative is
20:06:38 ldlework So the discrepency between "Shutup and just write your software correctly" and the blinding abscence of a simple solution being reported into the channel, speaks volumes.
20:07:25 BlaXpirit_ this happens every time on this channel
20:07:30 ldlework Maybe next time we can just skip the bullshit
20:07:33 ldlework and talk about the engineering
20:07:37 Triplefox Well, did you actually present the problem that requires your solution in a way

Re:Such potential

[orlanz]

OK, you can consider Python as a heavily standardized version of indentation. Python's entire objective is the human reader. It doesn't leave you and 10 other developers from "tweaking the indentation from time to time to make [their own] point toward the human reader". What people don't understand is that one's interpretation of what they write could be different from others. What one finds easier to understand, others find harder.

There have been countless times that I have read really good Java and C code and could start picking out which individual developers developed where. Do you know how much start up time is wasted in learning Dev1, Dev2's... DevXs' version of the C language? And if you touch C++... each dev has "minor versions" as they learn new ways of doing the same thing. And these code reviews are done in highly standardized environments with docs and comments. Still each developer gets their own unique version of a standardized language. And don't get me started on Perl or Ruby. There are no such things, there are just a ton of individual essays that the Perl and Ruby interpreters understand and execute.

With Python, there is still a lot of uniqueness among developers, but you really need to look for it at the higher levels. Like method & class relationships, program execution flows, or logic design. But at the low level of reading & understanding code from a team of developers, it is dead easy. There are slight variations, but not enough to need to learn that style of coding to help in the future. That is the benefit of Python, its a global coding standard that's built into the language itself. Something that development companies spend far too much money [re]implementing every year for their dev teams.

Now, I am not saying this is best or the way it should be done. Its just one standard where none really exist.