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0 pointsjimbob454y ago0 comments

Sadly, I think you’re spot-on about Nim’s future as the realization of the alternative timeline where Python didn’t make several stupid design choices (e.g. the GIL, Python 3).

It’s a shame because I think Nim has some neat features that allow it to present as a serious competitor to Rust but it will ultimately have to compete against Python instead to secure its niche.

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elcritch4y ago

Oh yes, Nim definitely feels like an alternate reality where Python 2 became static and dumped some poor design choices.

Well I believe there's room between Rust and Python where Nim can grow. It made the TIOBE top 50 lately even. Likely it can eat enough market share from the edges of both Rust & Python to become more well known (more libs, tools, etc).

Rust is fantastic but tedious to program (to me at least) and it's community focuses on more formal type traits, etc making "scripting" trickier. Python is great for a mix of quick scripts, web dev, and data science but it's slow enough (and getting complex enough!) for many to want something faster and more stable yet still easy to write. Nim lives in between them and is more enjoyable to write than either for many. Also, Nim _could_ add Rust as a backend target and be relevant even if Rust displaces C/C++. ;)

Nim is also great for embedded systems too! I've been using it a fair bit and it's really nice [1]. There's a lot of room to grow in that field.

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

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