21st April 2020 - Nim , Programming

Recently I got made aware that a comment I made on HackerNews had been linked to in a ZDNet article, this made me realise I should probably feature in here as well. So in a similar fashion to my older post that was a Reddit reply, here is my entire reply with only formatting changes, keep in mind that some of the replies might be outdated:

Who started this?

That would be Andreas Rumpf, or Araq as he is known on IRC

Is it corporately affiliated?

No, it was created by Andreas, and has stayed independent. But it has corporate backing, which helps pay for development, and they do get a certain prioritisation in what gets implemented. But no closed door stuff.

What languages is it similar to?

Depends on what kind of similarities. Syntactically it will remind you of Python or maybe even Ruby. But when you use it the powerful type system might remind you of Ada, the macro system possibly of Lisp, the run-time speed of C/C++ or Rust, and the compilation time of, well, not C++ (it's really fast).

What is the motivation of its creators?

As far as I know the initial motivation was to have something that was as usable as Python and languages like that, but which was actually fast and type-safe. For me as a contributor these features allow me to focus on higher level things so I tend to mostly use the macro and type system to create wonderful abstractions that allow me to create nice readable code quickly.

What is the philosophy driving its design?

Haven't seen any guys with long white beards, pipes, and stacks of book in the community, so I'm not entirely sure there is an official philosophy. The design is mostly based on giving tools to the developer, and making sure they do "the right thing". If the developer then uses these tools to chop their arm of then that is their prerogative, but generally not advised.

Is it intended to be an eventual competitor or replacement for languages XYZ?

Well many people come to Nim from Python, seeking better performance, or from C or JS seeking better usability. While Nim doesn't try to position itself as a direct replacement or competitor for any one language in particular it is a probably candidate for most if not all of them.

Where does it sit on the spectrum between raw assembly and MS Access?

In terms of abstraction somewhere high up above with Lisp and friends (no personal experience with MS Access, so not sure where that actually ranks). The core language is pretty straight forward, but with the macro system the sky is the limit!

Is it intended to be a "systems language" eg can you write a kernel or device driver using it?

Yes, Nim does call itself a systems programming language, and there have been toy kernels written in it (not sure about drivers though, but I wouldn't be surprised). It can also run on micro-controllers and other embedded systems. Pretty much as long as you can run C, you can probably run Nim. That being said it also compiles down to JS, and has a lot of features that allow it to be used for anything from web-sites, through games and applications, to micro-controllers and kernels.

Does it require a VM?

Trick question, but yes and no. The compiler implements a VM to run Nim code on compile-time for the macro system, but this VM is not present at run-time.

Is there corporate support available?

It is possible to get a contract with the core developers to get support yes. Not that I've ever felt the need for any further support than the excellent IRC channel (which is also bridged to Gitter and Discord).

How established is the developer community?

The aforementioned IRC channel is very active, as well of course as the GitHub repository. There is also a yearly meetup at FOSDEM, and talks, articles, and videos about the language and development is coming out all the time.

Are there books and courses?

There is so far only one physical book, Nim in Action, and it's really good! As far as courses go there is no active course with a teacher and course material (as far as I know). But there are tutorials for all levels of programming skills, from never programmed before to picking it up as your n-th language. There are also more interactive things like Excercism where you can solve problems and have people from the community look over your solutions. Other than that people will often happily look over and comment on your project if you post in on Reddit or drop a link in the IRC channel.

Does it have garbage collection?

Yes, by default Nim has a garbage collector, but it is tuneable so you can control when and for how long it runs. And you can disable it completely and use manual memory allocation, for when you're doing kernels and micro-controller work for example. The garbage collector is also per-thread, meaning that running multi-threaded will not stop your entire application when it's collecting garbage. You also have an option regarding which garbage collector you want to use, all with different performance considerations, but in general all really fast.

Is it a compiled language?

Yes. Nim itself compiles down to C/C++/Obj-C or even JS. Then it is passed on to the target compiler to create native binaries, or in the case of JS left to either be run by node or loaded into a web-page.

Is it a strongly typed language?

Yes. Nims type system is strong and flexible. The basics similar to Adas type system. It also has type-inference however, so you might not guess that it is strongly typed by looking at the examples.

What are the three perfect use cases?

Hmm, this one is tough. I use Nim for pretty much everything, from scripting simple things on my own machine, to creating and deploying web-sites, graphical applications and games. But judging from the community I think the top three use cases are: High-performance computations, Web-dev, and games. The primary financial backer of Nim, Status, also uses it to create an Ethereum client focused on mobile devices. But not sure which category to bunch that into.

How stable is the API?

Now with the release of v1 the API of the core language and stdlib will be stable moving forward on the v1 branch. This means bug fixes will be back-ported, and any new features will only be added if they don't break this promise.

What's the package management story?

Nim has its own package manager, Nimble, and over 1000 packages ready to go with everything from bindings to popular C libraries to large pure Nim libraries and applications.

Does it have a reasonable standard library?

Indeed! The standard library is large, and has pretty much everything you need.

Is there editor support for color coding and linting?

Yes, there are plug-ins for various editors (most use the VSCode one, I personally prefer Vim), and also an LSP implementation if you want these features in an editor that doesn't yet support them.

What's the job market look like?

Not huge to be perfectly honest, there are a couple of opportunities around. But I was surprised to find people at my current job using it for some tinkering and internal tools. I'm personally lucky enough that I have fairly large autonomy in how I do my work, and I'm able to use Nim.

Is the documentation well-written?

Personally I find them pretty good, and recently they have been read through and improved, so they are better than ever. Nim also offers document comments directly in the code, so many libraries you find will be nice and documented as well.

And most importantly, if we all got in the same room, would I want to hang out with the people excited about this language?

I've tried this at FOSDEM for two years now and they are a wonderful bunch!