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A comment on Nim for scientific computing: Back to the future.

Re:Nim for scientific computing: Back to the future by vezzy-fnord on Wednesday October 21, 2015 @07:16PM (#10429494)
Not sure why Nim keeps getting compared to Python. It's quite evidently influenced by the Wirthian languages, though I suppose contemporary programmers aren't really versed into those.
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Re:Nim for scientific computing: Back to the future by lobster_johnson on Thursday October 22, 2015 @12:31AM (#10430411)
I believe Nim's creator has a background using Borland's Pascal compilers (Delphi, Turbo Pascal). Nim is basically a modernized ObjectPascal with GC, generics and whitespace sensitivity. He even started out prefixing type names with T and P, just like Borland did, though fortunately that's going away.
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Re:Nim for scientific computing: Back to the future by pathsjs on Thursday October 22, 2015 @03:44AM (#10430902)
I only compare it to python because of the use case. Actually, if you read the post, I also consider Lua and other languages.

Still, I think, the similarity in syntax can help. If there is one thing that python got right, in my opinion, is its straightforward syntax, and that helps saving brain power for something other than parsing

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Re:Nim for scientific computing: Back to the future by TylerE on Wednesday October 21, 2015 @10:35PM (#10430114)
GC, indentation-significant syntax?
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Re:Nim for scientific computing: Back to the future by vezzy-fnord on Wednesday October 21, 2015 @11:50PM (#10430307)
Whitespace significance is practically the only resemblance, then. Wirth's languages obviously were garbage collected.
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Re:Nim for scientific computing: Back to the future by beagle3 on Friday October 23, 2015 @03:27PM (#10440785)
Algol and Oberon were garbage collected, but Pascal and Modula-2 weren't. Not sure about others (Euler? Modula-3? Oberon-2?)

Nim feels a lot more like Python than one would think just reading the descriptions. I can't put my finger on why, exactly - maybe the type inference that gives an almost duck-type experience, maybe the incredibly helpful dogfooding community; I'm not sure.

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