9 ms·

Learn X in Y minutes Where X=Nim

61 points by anacleto 12y ago

rubiquity 12y ago
Learn X in Y is pretty cool as a high level overview of a programming language. But I really like How I Start[0] because it focuses on how a programmer, often times the language creator or at the very least a prevalent user of the language, goes about starting a library or project. Nim also has an entry on How I Start[1] [0] - http://howistart.org http://howistart.org [1] - https://howistart.org/posts/nim/1 https://howistart.org/posts/nim/1
- rdudekul 12y ago
  Thanks for sharing. I found http://hookrace.net/blog/what-is-special-about-nim/ http://hookrace.net/blog/what-is-special-about-nim/ enlightening as well.
themartorana 12y ago
We've elected to use Go in a lot of our backend services - nothing striking there - but I've also been playing with Nim for fun. I can see clearly where I might draw a line of delineation between where I select Go vs. say, Rust, but I'm not as clear where that line is for Go vs. Nim. Does anyone have any enlightening thoughts on that?
- deleted 12y ago
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- deleted 12y ago
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- perturbation 12y ago
  Two areas I would make the case that Nim is better at (than Go) are interop with C and creating a DSL (as with Jester, the Sinatra-like web framework): https://github.com/dom96/jester/blob/master/readme.markdown https://github.com/dom96/jester/blob/master/readme.markdown I think that there's a lot of overlap for the types of problems that can be solved by either, but I like writing in Nim more than I like writing in Go.
- jakevn 12y ago
  Nim provides you more flexibility than Go or Rust. Go is a GC'ed language and that's that. Like any other GC'ed language, the treatment for GC woes is palliative. Rust is designed around no GC and that's that. Of course, Rust did at one point have a baked in GC and it can be used with a GC, but you need to fully understand the Rust way of doing things and will always be working with the borrow checker in mind. Nim's GC is special in comparison to mainstream GC'ed languages as it offers you great control. For ease of development it is a GC'ed language, yet for performance and ABI purposes allows deterministic GC. It seems to offer the ultimate in flexibility and expressiveness at the cost of footguns and complexity.
  - pcwalton 12y ago
    > Nim's GC is special in comparison to mainstream GC'ed languages as it offers you great control. For ease of development it is a GC'ed language, yet for performance and ABI purposes allows deterministic GC. Unless you need to GC pointers shared between multiple threads, in which case your only option is the Boehm GC (which is imprecise, unlike Go's). This is a significant disadvantage in both expressiveness and safety that Go does not possess.
    - dom96 12y ago
      In what situations would you need to do this? I have been using Nim for a long time now and never felt limited by this.
      - pcwalton 12y ago
        All the time. It's the bread-and-butter of high-performance concurrent programming. - I have a large graph data structure allocated in one thread and I want to transfer it to another thread without copying. - I have a lock-free data structure and I want the benefits of a GC so I don't have to use less efficient hazard pointers [1]. - I have an in-memory database that I want to be able to query efficiently from multiple threads without copying. - I'm doing work stealing on a large, complex data structure and I need to be able to access pieces of that data structure from multiple threads with unpredictable memory access patterns. - I'm using a multicore job queuing system (like most AAA games do nowadays) and almost all game assets can be accessed from any thread. These are just a few. Sure, you can use unsafe manual memory management to work around it, but without RAII and a library designed for manual memory management you suffer a huge penalty in usability—not to mention the safety problems. I can foresee people easily ending up in a situation whereby they can't multithread their applications because they started out using the GC and would have to rewrite all their code to switch from automatic memory management to unsafe manual memory management. Another way to work around the restriction is to copy the data, but that usually ends up making your parallel algorithm slower than sequential unless it has very high arithmetic intensity. (This is based on experience.) [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hazard_pointer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hazard_pointer
dallbee 12y ago
And HN was doing so well, I haven't seen a nimrod post on here in days.
- ORioN63 12y ago
  Nimrod name was changed to Nim, by the way.
  - dallbee 12y ago
    Nimrod was more appropriate, as we could then call the users Nimrods.
- ElectronCharge 12y ago
  What do you have against Nim exactly?
  - dallbee 12y ago
    Just the community.
    - rubiquity 12y ago
      Care to explain?

61 points by anacleto 12y ago

Learn X in Y is pretty cool as a high level overview of a programming language. But I really like How I Start[0] because it focuses on how a programmer, often times the language creator or at the very least a prevalent user of the language, goes about starting a library or project. Nim also has an entry on How I Start[1] [0] - http://howistart.org http://howistart.org [1] - https://howistart.org/posts/nim/1 https://howistart.org/posts/nim/1

rdudekul 12y ago
Thanks for sharing. I found http://hookrace.net/blog/what-is-special-about-nim/ http://hookrace.net/blog/what-is-special-about-nim/ enlightening as well.

themartorana 12y ago

We've elected to use Go in a lot of our backend services - nothing striking there - but I've also been playing with Nim for fun. I can see clearly where I might draw a line of delineation between where I select Go vs. say, Rust, but I'm not as clear where that line is for Go vs. Nim. Does anyone have any enlightening thoughts on that?

deleted 12y ago
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deleted 12y ago
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perturbation 12y ago
Two areas I would make the case that Nim is better at (than Go) are interop with C and creating a DSL (as with Jester, the Sinatra-like web framework): https://github.com/dom96/jester/blob/master/readme.markdown https://github.com/dom96/jester/blob/master/readme.markdown I think that there's a lot of overlap for the types of problems that can be solved by either, but I like writing in Nim more than I like writing in Go.
jakevn 12y ago
Nim provides you more flexibility than Go or Rust. Go is a GC'ed language and that's that. Like any other GC'ed language, the treatment for GC woes is palliative. Rust is designed around no GC and that's that. Of course, Rust did at one point have a baked in GC and it can be used with a GC, but you need to fully understand the Rust way of doing things and will always be working with the borrow checker in mind. Nim's GC is special in comparison to mainstream GC'ed languages as it offers you great control. For ease of development it is a GC'ed language, yet for performance and ABI purposes allows deterministic GC. It seems to offer the ultimate in flexibility and expressiveness at the cost of footguns and complexity.
- pcwalton 12y ago
  > Nim's GC is special in comparison to mainstream GC'ed languages as it offers you great control. For ease of development it is a GC'ed language, yet for performance and ABI purposes allows deterministic GC. Unless you need to GC pointers shared between multiple threads, in which case your only option is the Boehm GC (which is imprecise, unlike Go's). This is a significant disadvantage in both expressiveness and safety that Go does not possess.
  - dom96 12y ago
    In what situations would you need to do this? I have been using Nim for a long time now and never felt limited by this.
    - pcwalton 12y ago
      All the time. It's the bread-and-butter of high-performance concurrent programming. - I have a large graph data structure allocated in one thread and I want to transfer it to another thread without copying. - I have a lock-free data structure and I want the benefits of a GC so I don't have to use less efficient hazard pointers [1]. - I have an in-memory database that I want to be able to query efficiently from multiple threads without copying. - I'm doing work stealing on a large, complex data structure and I need to be able to access pieces of that data structure from multiple threads with unpredictable memory access patterns. - I'm using a multicore job queuing system (like most AAA games do nowadays) and almost all game assets can be accessed from any thread. These are just a few. Sure, you can use unsafe manual memory management to work around it, but without RAII and a library designed for manual memory management you suffer a huge penalty in usability—not to mention the safety problems. I can foresee people easily ending up in a situation whereby they can't multithread their applications because they started out using the GC and would have to rewrite all their code to switch from automatic memory management to unsafe manual memory management. Another way to work around the restriction is to copy the data, but that usually ends up making your parallel algorithm slower than sequential unless it has very high arithmetic intensity. (This is based on experience.) [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hazard_pointer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hazard_pointer

dallbee 12y ago

And HN was doing so well, I haven't seen a nimrod post on here in days.

ORioN63 12y ago
Nimrod name was changed to Nim, by the way.
- dallbee 12y ago
  Nimrod was more appropriate, as we could then call the users Nimrods.
ElectronCharge 12y ago
What do you have against Nim exactly?
- dallbee 12y ago
  Just the community.
  - rubiquity 12y ago
    Care to explain?