4 ms·

Didn't python start this way 25ish years ago? It then has slowly and steadily gained developers. Nim might also be there in another 15 years.

pjmlp 5y ago
Python did had a couple of smallish killer applications like Zope, being used as scripting language in 3D applications, and gaining adoption among Perl users after Perl 6 never ending story. Additionally Guido has always worked in well known companies, and Microsoft and IBM have toyed with Python on their products as well.
- m_mueller 5y ago
  I think that‘s a possible path for Nim to develop. Win over a trickle of python devs who‘ve learned the problems arising once you hit a certain performance ceiling / scale. This is being accentuated by hardware & cloud developments - startup time & compute efficiency becoming increasingly important (containerization/serverless driving one, I/O performance outgrowing CPU perf. driving the other). If those trends continue, Python will increasingly be ill fitted. And I‘m saying this as a Python dev.
  - pjmlp 5y ago
    Except that Guido went to Microsoft to work on their new JIT project, while Instagram is also pursuing their own, and there is Cython which follows the same compile to native code workflow (C based backed) as Nim. The biggest problem in Python slowness isn't that solutions don't exist, rather the community at large tends not to embrace them as other ecosystems do.
    - m_mueller 5y ago
      My experience with optimizing Python code after ~10y is that after a certain point it's just not worth it and you'd be better off rewriting in a more performant runtime once you hit that. That includes experiments I did with pypy, Cython and Numba for various projects.
nimmer 5y ago
At the time no companies were heavily marketing FOSS projects. Also, today large companies have a fanbase.

4 ms·

Didn't python start this way 25ish years ago? It then has slowly and steadily gained developers. Nim might also be there in another 15 years.

by m_mueller 5y ago

pjmlp 5y ago
Python did had a couple of smallish killer applications like Zope, being used as scripting language in 3D applications, and gaining adoption among Perl users after Perl 6 never ending story. Additionally Guido has always worked in well known companies, and Microsoft and IBM have toyed with Python on their products as well.
- m_mueller 5y ago
  I think that‘s a possible path for Nim to develop. Win over a trickle of python devs who‘ve learned the problems arising once you hit a certain performance ceiling / scale. This is being accentuated by hardware & cloud developments - startup time & compute efficiency becoming increasingly important (containerization/serverless driving one, I/O performance outgrowing CPU perf. driving the other). If those trends continue, Python will increasingly be ill fitted. And I‘m saying this as a Python dev.
  - pjmlp 5y ago
    Except that Guido went to Microsoft to work on their new JIT project, while Instagram is also pursuing their own, and there is Cython which follows the same compile to native code workflow (C based backed) as Nim. The biggest problem in Python slowness isn't that solutions don't exist, rather the community at large tends not to embrace them as other ecosystems do.
    - m_mueller 5y ago
      My experience with optimizing Python code after ~10y is that after a certain point it's just not worth it and you'd be better off rewriting in a more performant runtime once you hit that. That includes experiments I did with pypy, Cython and Numba for various projects.
nimmer 5y ago
At the time no companies were heavily marketing FOSS projects. Also, today large companies have a fanbase.