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Having played with both Nim and Rust, I also prefer Nim. Basically Rust is a slightly more pleasant C++, but still huge, complicated, things break all the time

by Mikeb85 12y ago

Having played with both Nim and Rust, I also prefer Nim. Basically Rust is a slightly more pleasant C++, but still huge, complicated, things break all the time, and there's no IDE support to help you make sense of anything. It's probably more robust, maybe faster as things get big, but I haven't got there yet. Nim is as easy to write as Python, the toolchain is very easy to set up, creating Nim interfaces (with documentation) to your favourite C or C++ library is dirt simple (thanks to tools that come with the compiler), and the language is shockingly fast. Right now, it's just so much easier to get things done with Nim. Reminds me of Coffee-Script - because it compiles to another language, you get access to a million libraries and platforms for free.

kevin_thibedeau 12y ago
It's a shame that it doesn't have the mindshare: 27 nim/nimrod questions on SO, 1548 rust. Still not "notable" enough for a Wikipedia entry. I can see nim getting stuck lingering on the margin like Objective-C did before OSX.
- Mikeb85 12y ago
  It's possible. I personally just hope that Araq and others keep working on it. Right now it's quite easy to use without a lot of libraries written in Nim, because of interoperability. Besides, I see Nim more as a 'secret weapon' sort of language, or something that individual programmers use. Rust is more of a 'big idea' language, so it makes sense a corporation is pushing it.
  - pcwalton 12y ago
    > Besides, I see Nim more as a 'secret weapon' sort of language, or something that individual programmers use. Rust is more of a 'big idea' language, so it makes sense a corporation is pushing it. I don't think that "big idea" languages [1] are necessarily the provenance of corporations/committees as opposed to individuals. If anything, the opposite tends to be true, as large languages such as C++ and C# have tended to grow to encompass more and more features over time as their feature sets expand to accommodate more and more stakeholders. Rust in particular started out as an individual project, with a set of design constraints—those of low-level memory-safe systems programming—that have remained unchanged throughout its lifetime. [1] I'm not really a fan of that term anyway, as "big ideas" are just design constraints, things that all languages have. Rust just happens to have a unique (among industry languages, save maybe ATS) set of them.
  - def- 12y ago
    > Rust is more of a 'big idea' language, so it makes sense a corporation is pushing it. Araq just announced that Nim has financial backing now: http://forum.nim-lang.org/t/870 http://forum.nim-lang.org/t/870
    - Mikeb85 12y ago
      Fantastic. And thanks for that link. I was messing around with some 3D stuff in Nim, and he's working on 3D C++ stuff too I see...
- agumonkey 12y ago
  Is there a flagship project using Nim ? Rust has Servo. I've read here and there that this is the best way for a language to catch on.
- tokyo1000 12y ago
  What if that's just because people have fewer problems with Nim than they have with Rust? The number of SO questions is a better measure of how often and how many people run into problems than it is a measure of overall popularity.

by Mikeb85 12y ago

kevin_thibedeau 12y ago

It's a shame that it doesn't have the mindshare: 27 nim/nimrod questions on SO, 1548 rust. Still not "notable" enough for a Wikipedia entry. I can see nim getting stuck lingering on the margin like Objective-C did before OSX.

Mikeb85 12y ago
It's possible. I personally just hope that Araq and others keep working on it. Right now it's quite easy to use without a lot of libraries written in Nim, because of interoperability. Besides, I see Nim more as a 'secret weapon' sort of language, or something that individual programmers use. Rust is more of a 'big idea' language, so it makes sense a corporation is pushing it.
- pcwalton 12y ago
  > Besides, I see Nim more as a 'secret weapon' sort of language, or something that individual programmers use. Rust is more of a 'big idea' language, so it makes sense a corporation is pushing it. I don't think that "big idea" languages [1] are necessarily the provenance of corporations/committees as opposed to individuals. If anything, the opposite tends to be true, as large languages such as C++ and C# have tended to grow to encompass more and more features over time as their feature sets expand to accommodate more and more stakeholders. Rust in particular started out as an individual project, with a set of design constraints—those of low-level memory-safe systems programming—that have remained unchanged throughout its lifetime. [1] I'm not really a fan of that term anyway, as "big ideas" are just design constraints, things that all languages have. Rust just happens to have a unique (among industry languages, save maybe ATS) set of them.
- def- 12y ago
  > Rust is more of a 'big idea' language, so it makes sense a corporation is pushing it. Araq just announced that Nim has financial backing now: http://forum.nim-lang.org/t/870 http://forum.nim-lang.org/t/870
  - Mikeb85 12y ago
    Fantastic. And thanks for that link. I was messing around with some 3D stuff in Nim, and he's working on 3D C++ stuff too I see...
agumonkey 12y ago
Is there a flagship project using Nim ? Rust has Servo. I've read here and there that this is the best way for a language to catch on.
tokyo1000 12y ago
What if that's just because people have fewer problems with Nim than they have with Rust? The number of SO questions is a better measure of how often and how many people run into problems than it is a measure of overall popularity.