Re:Ask HN: Does anyone use Nim language in production?
by dom96 on Sunday May 28, 2017 @04:21PM
(#14435934)
The goal of any language designer is not to appeal to the widest possible group of people but to create a language that appeals to them. In this case style insensitivity is something that Araq wanted in his language and so he implemented it.
It seems odd to me that Nim developers chose to go with that "style insensitivity" (which I would have predicted would be highly controversial and very discouraging for many, many developers) but indentation sensitivity (which is less controversial, but still more controversial than indentation insensitivity; shockingly large numbers of people dislike it, including me at least when combined with some other language features).
If the goal was widest possible appeal and adoption, those two decisions should have been swapped, I think. If the goal is related to some specific philosophical stance, however, I suppose every language developer who doesn't just want to recreate PHP or VisualBasic needs to pick the hill on which he or she is willing to die, and only time will tell whether it will be worth it.