D vs nim

[Mark]

On Thursday, 3 May 2018 at 23:09:34 UTC, Timothee Cour wrote:
> nim supports static if (`when`) + CTFE. A simple google search 
> or searching
> would've revealed that.
>
> On Thu, May 3, 2018 at 3:20 PM Mark via Digitalmars-d < 
> digitalmars-d at puremagic.com> wrote:
>
>> On Thursday, 3 May 2018 at 20:57:16 UTC, Dennis wrote:
>> > On Thursday, 3 May 2018 at 19:11:05 UTC, Mark wrote:
>> >> Funnily, none of these languages have a "static if" 
>> >> construct, nor do Rust, Swift and Nim. Not one that I could 
>> >> find, anyway.
>> >
>> > What qualifies under "static if"? Because Rust, Swift and 
>> > Nim do have conditional compilation.
>> >
> https://doc.rust-lang.org/book/first-edition/conditional-compilation.html
>> >
> https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/Swift/Conceptual/Swift_Programming_Language/Statements.html (conditional compilation blocks)
>> >
> https://nim-lang.org/docs/manual.html#statements-and-expressions-when-statement
>
>> Fair enough. I should have written "static if + CTFE".

The little information on the official site describes `when` more 
like #ifdef in C than an actual static if. I also went over a few 
dozens of modules in the standard library and the statement seems 
to be rarely used, and when it does it's usually in an #ifdef-ish 
context (like platform specific code).

Perhaps Nim's support for conditional compilation is as powerful 
as D's is, but you can see why my impression is currently to the 
contrary.