Nim Blog

> If your team really knows what they're doing and can take advantage of the flexibility without creating a mess, they can let you move really fast and make elegant DSLs and so on. [..snip..] I never thought I'd say this before, but I would have been happier stepping into C++.

Actually, I find Nim language [1] to be a great alternative to C++ as far as compiled, statically typed, high performance modern languages are concerned. Moreover, Nim's meta-programming capabilities (generics, templates, macros) are second to none for creating elegant DSLs. And its syntax makes Python developers feel at home. Preempting questions about garbage collection -- Nim allows to switch off GC and manually manage memory if a programmer so desires. Or you can manually manage memory in some critical parts of your program while letting the rest be garbage collected.

[1] https://nim-lang.org/

I don't know what @winding means, exactly, but at best this seems highly misleading. Nim had babel packages by around 2010 (when it was called Nimrod and there was a Tower of Babel name scheme) and then nimble packages since 2014 or so. Also, literally 30 seconds on https://nim-lang.org (click on Documentation) and you get to https://nimble.directory/ , search for index and get to adix which has all sorts of efficient Table variants.

There has never been much prog.lang. benefit from being "in the stdlib/core" in Nim (unlike Python or Go, say). The benefit is more "software distribution" for the dependency allergic, but the Nim culture is much less micro-deps than seems in vogue lately. All that said, I think having a more batteries core distribution is valuable - just less than you might guess - and practically that needs delegation.

Interesting language. Somewhat reminds of me "ooc"[0], though I believe ooc is ref-counted/garbage-collected (? I think. I can't remember, been a while since I've touched it); but being able to easy use C libraries from a relatively low-level language that has nicer high-level constructs is still a beautiful idea, in my opinion.

The language I'm using these days for that exact feature set though is Nim[1] -- being able to use {.compile.} pragmas and bring in header/source files, along with the great C type support is wonderful; but again, garbage collector (albeit one that can be tuned and/or turned off). Zig seems to be targeting the "true C replacement" niche, which I'm going to have to keep an eye on!

[0] http://ooc-lang.org/

[1] http://nim-lang.org/

Check out Nim, it's got python style syntax, but it's statically typed and compiles down into performant C and then into a binary.

I've been converting a lambda function used at work from Python into Nim[0]: I've had very few issues so far and the performance gains are fantastic (Admittedly my lambda function is pretty straightforward, but still).
It's also got support for functional programming styles, with a function composition operator/first class functions etc[1] and a pragma to tell the compiler that a function has no side effects[2].

[0] https://nim-lang.org/
[1] https://nim-by-example.github.io/procvars/
[2] https://nim-by-example.github.io/procs/

A possible alternative to MicroPython is Nim - it's a strongly typed language with Python-like syntax that compiles down to C. Since it compiles to C, it can use existing C libraries without much fuss (just wrap signatures as needed), plus there's no need for a "micro" version of the language.

Several members of the community have been working on improving the embedded ecosystem: although I haven't played around with either yet, the nesper library (for the ESP32) and ratel (generic framework: tested for the Arduino/AVR) have been recommended.

https://nim-lang.org/

https://github.com/elcritch/nesper/

https://github.com/PMunch/ratel

I can think of a couple.

Write a small toy document database with an integrated ORM. Tables/documents can be modeled as objects and the query API can be built using a functional paradigm. Doesn't need to be fancy. Could be a simple key/value store really.

Or how about an HTML generation library?

Or how about a toy web server?

How about a command line argument parser for your favorite language?

How about a small library for geometric calculations?

There are many languages that have multi-paradigm support. One of my favorite multi-paradigm languages in still in it's growing phase, but it's fun to learn: https://nim-lang.org/