D vs nim

[David J Kordsmeier]

On Friday, 10 April 2015 at 21:26:35 UTC, bachmeier wrote:
> On Friday, 10 April 2015 at 18:52:24 UTC, weaselcat wrote:
>> The only things I've read about nim have been on the D forums 
>> - it seems the wikipedia article is even being considered for 
>> deletion due to not being noteworthy. So I think you might 
>> have trouble finding any comparisons.
>
> Read the comments sections on other languages on Reddit 
> programming and you'll see their spam all over the place.
>
> I've never used Nim (and don't plan to because I've been turned 
> off by their constant spamming of comment threads on Reddit) 
> but the numerous comments I've seen repeatedly indicate that 
> Nim is not yet ready for real use.

This is a fair set of critiques as far as the spamming goes.  The 
NIM project founder is sort of a one person show in development 
and promotion.  I wouldn't say it is not ready for real 
(commercial) use without being objective, as you have to really 
characterize what those requirements are.  If one considers 
commercial criteria to be something like: toolchain quality, IDE 
support, documentation, platform support, sustainable community, 
fair licensing terms, significant technical merits, actual 
adoption in the enterprise or research community, and commercial 
support available.  I'd agree that if your graded NIM across 
these criteria, it doesn't score high.  What impresses me about 
it are the technical merits, platform support, and its toolchain.

Disclosure, I did actually use NIM before posting.  I wrote a 
module called huenim which handles basic Philips HUE 
communication.  I found the experience to be a mixed bag.  I was 
impressed that the project lead of NIM was available to help me 
in my struggles around UPnP.  But there just is not enough great 
documentation with sample code, at the level I like when I am 
picking up a new language.  The syntax bothers me, but that's 
just my own issue with too many years of Java and C.  Another 
thing that really impressed me was how easy it was to bootstrap 
the language on an ARM device, particularly AARCH64.  The total 
runtime size is small as well.  Would I use it for my company?  
Yes.  Is there risk in doing this?  Yes.  Hard to recruit NIM 
coders.  Hard to know what is the long term sustainability of the 
NIM community and project as a whole.

I still would say that on the ready for "real" commercial use, D 
would get a much higher grade on more categories.