[dusted]

I don't know anyhting about NIM in particular, but you touch on points with which I'm right at home, and I suggest you have a look at programming in C, it's a simple and small language, and its syntax is less intimidating than C++, while at the same time introducing you to the concepts you mention.

The nice thing about C in your case, is that you won't get very far before being introduced to things like pointers, and allocating memory on the heap :)