A Review of Nim 2: The Good and Bad with Example Code
13 days ago
- #Programming Languages
- #Systems Programming
- #Nim
- Nim is undervalued but pleasant to use, with the author's personal website built using it.
- Nim 2 defaults to ORC/ARC memory management, not garbage collection, with reference-counted objects similar to C++'s shared_ptr.
- Nim serves as a production-ready alternative to Carbon, with excellent C++ interoperability but doesn't compile to readable C/C++.
- Nim's strengths include conciseness, flexibility, performance, and meta-programming capabilities, compiling to multiple languages including JavaScript.
- Memory management in Nim is C++-like, supporting RAII, destructors, moves, and copies, with options for manual memory management.
- Nim's compilation and interoperability features allow it to use existing C, C++, and JavaScript libraries directly.
- Language design highlights include procedures with UFCS, dynamic dispatch with 'method', and a robust type system with generics and concepts.
- Meta-programming in Nim is powerful, with compile-time execution, macros, and templates enabling DSLs and code generation.
- A simple key/value file format implementation showcases Nim's fieldPairs and procedure overloading for easy serialization.
- Nim's weaknesses include tooling issues, debugging challenges, and some language features that may confuse newcomers.
- Compile times are reasonable but could improve with incremental builds and an LLVM backend, with potential improvements in Nim 3.
- The standard library lacks WASM support and may benefit from a redesign to incorporate newer language features.
- Despite its small community, Nim has high-quality libraries like cligen for CLI tools, making it a compelling systems programming language.