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> If you want a reasonably fast statically compiled language, what would you use? Nim. More similar to Go than most languages are to each other, but Nim has (

> If you want a reasonably fast statically compiled language, what would you use? Nim. More similar to Go than most languages are to each other, but Nim has (a) more modern features, (b) better compatibility/integration with C libraries, and (c) an amazing macro system. The only thing in Go's favor is the size of its community/ecosystem, which seems to be an accident of timing and most definitely not about inherent quality.

iends 11y ago
There is very little chance I could sell a CEO on using Nim. The fact of the matter is that the community and ecosystem are parts of the entire platform and the platform matters a huge deal when you're betting your business on it. Accident or not.
- notacoward 11y ago
  Not disagreeing with you, but that only matters if you need to sell a CEO on your choice of language. Many of us don't, and every language had to cross that chasm somehow. Once upon a time, there were plenty of CEOs who didn't believe you should use Java for anything that mattered. Ditto for Javascript. Most relevantly, ditto for Go. If size of the existing community and ecosystem were the main criterion for choosing a language, Go would still be in the same bucket as Nim. Somebody has to use a language because of its own inherent strength before the CEOs can be convinced.
jibalt 11y ago
Nim is fun but it's not even at version 1 and has a very small developer and user base. "The only thing in Go's favor ..." The selectivity of a true ideologue.
- notacoward 11y ago
  It's the Go fanatics who are the ideologues here. Anything Go has is important, anything it doesn't have is trivial. What a horrible attitude to bring into any kind of technical discussion. I've defended Go against detractors who say it's worthless because it has mandatory GC or doesn't have generics (which I do consider a weakness but not a fatal one). There's nothing particularly wrong with Go, but there's not all that much special about it either and it does have flaws. Can you name some other feature that (a) distinguishes Go from Every Other Language and (b) matters? Something that might sway a CEO, as we were discussing? "Goroutines" perhaps? Riiight. That CEO will be really impressed. Don't project your bias onto others.
aikah 11y ago
Nim doesn't have interfaces. The amount of plumbing required to implement them is ridiculous. It has generics though. My point is how can recent OO languages miss this kind of stuff when designing their type system ? Crystal looks like a better bet, unfortunately it doesn't run on Windows.
- notacoward 11y ago
  At risk of sounding like a Go advocate when generics come up, the lack of interfaces doesn't bother me because interfaces themselves are a bit of a hack. When you have inheritance, object variants, generics, and a strong template/macro system, what's left for interfaces to do? I'd much rather have all of these other things than interfaces alone.
  - cyphar 11y ago
    The fact that you can create an online interface and an unrelated library (which you didn't write) can have structures that implement your interface automatically is pretty useful (and cool) IMHO.
    - notacoward 11y ago
      Fair point, but much of that benefit is lost without decent support for those third-party implementations to be loaded dynamically. So Nim is missing one piece, but those other features I mentioned can get you very close to the same place. Go is missing the other piece, with no really good way to make up for it. That problem's not even solvable as long as Go's runtime makes no provision for interfacing to code that doesn't play by its own (ever-changing, undocumented) rules about things like goroutines and GC. I know which shortcoming I'd rather live with.
      - nyan4 11y ago
        > Go's runtime makes no provision for interfacing to code that doesn't play by its own This alone makes Go really unfit for developing system libraries.
BuckRogers 11y ago
Agreed, I think timing with Go is a huge factor. Though I think the size and scope of Go's popularity is overstated. I looked into it for a recent web project and found many formerly popular libraries now unmaintained. I felt more confident and went with Django on Python 3.5. If I want something compiled, the killer for Go for me has always been C ABI incompatibility. It's its own island. I'm not saying I wouldn't consider using Go for some things, but that has been a big redflag vs other choices.

iends 11y ago

There is very little chance I could sell a CEO on using Nim. The fact of the matter is that the community and ecosystem are parts of the entire platform and the platform matters a huge deal when you're betting your business on it. Accident or not.

notacoward 11y ago
Not disagreeing with you, but that only matters if you need to sell a CEO on your choice of language. Many of us don't, and every language had to cross that chasm somehow. Once upon a time, there were plenty of CEOs who didn't believe you should use Java for anything that mattered. Ditto for Javascript. Most relevantly, ditto for Go. If size of the existing community and ecosystem were the main criterion for choosing a language, Go would still be in the same bucket as Nim. Somebody has to use a language because of its own inherent strength before the CEOs can be convinced.

jibalt 11y ago

Nim is fun but it's not even at version 1 and has a very small developer and user base. "The only thing in Go's favor ..." The selectivity of a true ideologue.

notacoward 11y ago
It's the Go fanatics who are the ideologues here. Anything Go has is important, anything it doesn't have is trivial. What a horrible attitude to bring into any kind of technical discussion. I've defended Go against detractors who say it's worthless because it has mandatory GC or doesn't have generics (which I do consider a weakness but not a fatal one). There's nothing particularly wrong with Go, but there's not all that much special about it either and it does have flaws. Can you name some other feature that (a) distinguishes Go from Every Other Language and (b) matters? Something that might sway a CEO, as we were discussing? "Goroutines" perhaps? Riiight. That CEO will be really impressed. Don't project your bias onto others.

aikah 11y ago

Nim doesn't have interfaces. The amount of plumbing required to implement them is ridiculous. It has generics though. My point is how can recent OO languages miss this kind of stuff when designing their type system ? Crystal looks like a better bet, unfortunately it doesn't run on Windows.

notacoward 11y ago
At risk of sounding like a Go advocate when generics come up, the lack of interfaces doesn't bother me because interfaces themselves are a bit of a hack. When you have inheritance, object variants, generics, and a strong template/macro system, what's left for interfaces to do? I'd much rather have all of these other things than interfaces alone.
- cyphar 11y ago
  The fact that you can create an online interface and an unrelated library (which you didn't write) can have structures that implement your interface automatically is pretty useful (and cool) IMHO.
  - notacoward 11y ago
    Fair point, but much of that benefit is lost without decent support for those third-party implementations to be loaded dynamically. So Nim is missing one piece, but those other features I mentioned can get you very close to the same place. Go is missing the other piece, with no really good way to make up for it. That problem's not even solvable as long as Go's runtime makes no provision for interfacing to code that doesn't play by its own (ever-changing, undocumented) rules about things like goroutines and GC. I know which shortcoming I'd rather live with.
    - nyan4 11y ago
      > Go's runtime makes no provision for interfacing to code that doesn't play by its own This alone makes Go really unfit for developing system libraries.

BuckRogers 11y ago

Agreed, I think timing with Go is a huge factor. Though I think the size and scope of Go's popularity is overstated. I looked into it for a recent web project and found many formerly popular libraries now unmaintained. I felt more confident and went with Django on Python 3.5. If I want something compiled, the killer for Go for me has always been C ABI incompatibility. It's its own island. I'm not saying I wouldn't consider using Go for some things, but that has been a big redflag vs other choices.