Re:A Programming Language Underdog
by alehander42 on Saturday September 22, 2018 @04:47PM
(#18047901)
I have implemented source maps for the js backend : https://github.com/nim-lang/Nim/pull/7508
They aren't merged yet in the upstream compiler because I wasn't sure if I wanted to refactor the jsgen with them, but otherwise they are almost there: I use them in a personal project in a forked branch
The docs issue and devel being rough are both due to the pre-1.0 status and the smaller community. It's a little bit of a catch-22; you need adoption to gain contributors but people won't adopt until there's enough contributions to make it stable.
yeah, which is usually where big companies help out. Their respect in the tech communities makes people take note of the new technology.
I really really think "underdog" is the best way to describe Nim because of this.
- js doesn't have source maps (kinda of a big deal to me)
- some error messages are head scratchers (seem to remember trying to add things to an immutable array not being clear)
- docs could use love (eg seeing more examples of macros in action)
- devel (their nightly compiler) can be rough (e.g. i found the "strings cannot be null" cutover a bit rocky -- my own damn fault, i can't go back to 0.18 after being on 0.18.1)
- the big one I think, however, is adoption. I keep hearing "i'll just use rust or go". That's legit as they're also awesome.
nim's stdlib is massive (too big?) and there's tonnes of high quality packages out there. You won't be left thinking... well, crap, looks like I need to talk to roll this redis layer myself.
EDIT: Formatting. How does it even work?