4 ms·

What about Nim? I've found that a lot more productive than Rust even without libs.

mlevental 9y ago
how's the compile time with nim? go's compile time makes it almost as good as having a repl. i tried crystal a while ago and it has atrocious compile times.
- dom96 9y ago
  The compile times are on par with Go. The Nim compiler (written in Nim and containing ~100k LOC) compiles in under 10 seconds on my MacBook Pro, and this is from a cold cache. It's even faster when making changes as the C source files generated by Nim are cached.
  - merb 9y ago
    the question how big are the compile times on a project in the size of kubernetes, i wouldn't call that "quick compile time". even the go part of it. I mean yes the use case for many people who use go have a fast compile time, but once it goes huge, the speedup isn't as big as on other languages.
  - mlevental 9y ago
    tangential question: are there still compiler bugs?
    - dom96 9y ago
      Of course, all software has bugs :)
      - wyager 9y ago
        This is not true, and shouldn't be used as a lazy excuse to write bad software. There is absolutely software that is entirely free of bugs; it just takes formal methods to get there for software of any reasonable complexity.
        webkike 9y ago
        You can never however guarantee that a program will run free of errors. Hardware is faulty and not always in ways that are human caused: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECC_memory
        dom96 9y ago
        Sure there is. But in practice most compilers I know of contain multiple bugs. The main difference between the compilers is how many users these bugs affect.
        deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
webkike 9y ago
On a personal note I'm not a huge fan of the syntax. The type system looks nice but frankly not as simple and expressive as Rust's as well.
- dom96 9y ago
  That's a shame. Which parts of the syntax do you dislike? Can you also elaborate on the type system?
  - webkike 9y ago
    Sure Dom (always nice to see you come up in Nim discussions :) if you want I can send you an email getting into specifics but: A lot of the syntax seems like a "special case." For example, being able to specify what value an enum variant prints with a tuple of a value an a string during declaration feels like the wrong way of doing things. In Rust, the way this would be handled is by implementing a Display or ToString trait. For the type system, it boils down to Concepts: in Nim, they're still in development, but in Rust, the language is built around them. And I love this.
    - dom96 9y ago
      Thank you for replying :) No need to get into specifics. I think I understand your point and I must admit I am inclined to share your feelings about it too. Hopefully soon Nim's concepts will become stable enough to be used in such places too.
    - logicallee 9y ago
      I am not the other poster but I would be extremely interested a similar email you offered, but on Go (if you've used it). My email is in my profile. I'm curious if you have any thoughts. Thanks!

how's the compile time with nim? go's compile time makes it almost as good as having a repl. i tried crystal a while ago and it has atrocious compile times.

dom96 9y ago
The compile times are on par with Go. The Nim compiler (written in Nim and containing ~100k LOC) compiles in under 10 seconds on my MacBook Pro, and this is from a cold cache. It's even faster when making changes as the C source files generated by Nim are cached.
- merb 9y ago
  the question how big are the compile times on a project in the size of kubernetes, i wouldn't call that "quick compile time". even the go part of it. I mean yes the use case for many people who use go have a fast compile time, but once it goes huge, the speedup isn't as big as on other languages.
- mlevental 9y ago
  tangential question: are there still compiler bugs?
  - dom96 9y ago
    Of course, all software has bugs :)
    - wyager 9y ago
      This is not true, and shouldn't be used as a lazy excuse to write bad software. There is absolutely software that is entirely free of bugs; it just takes formal methods to get there for software of any reasonable complexity.
      - webkike 9y ago
        You can never however guarantee that a program will run free of errors. Hardware is faulty and not always in ways that are human caused: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECC_memory
      - dom96 9y ago
        Sure there is. But in practice most compilers I know of contain multiple bugs. The main difference between the compilers is how many users these bugs affect.
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]

webkike 9y ago

On a personal note I'm not a huge fan of the syntax. The type system looks nice but frankly not as simple and expressive as Rust's as well.

dom96 9y ago
That's a shame. Which parts of the syntax do you dislike? Can you also elaborate on the type system?
- webkike 9y ago
  Sure Dom (always nice to see you come up in Nim discussions :) if you want I can send you an email getting into specifics but: A lot of the syntax seems like a "special case." For example, being able to specify what value an enum variant prints with a tuple of a value an a string during declaration feels like the wrong way of doing things. In Rust, the way this would be handled is by implementing a Display or ToString trait. For the type system, it boils down to Concepts: in Nim, they're still in development, but in Rust, the language is built around them. And I love this.
  - dom96 9y ago
    Thank you for replying :) No need to get into specifics. I think I understand your point and I must admit I am inclined to share your feelings about it too. Hopefully soon Nim's concepts will become stable enough to be used in such places too.
  - logicallee 9y ago
    I am not the other poster but I would be extremely interested a similar email you offered, but on Go (if you've used it). My email is in my profile. I'm curious if you have any thoughts. Thanks!