| Nim is too timid. Most languages are too timid. My context: I'm a maintainer of iNim, creator of the Rust channel, No Boilerplate, and a professional python web developer for 15 years. The features you are excited about in Nim are compromised for the sake of simplicity: - Macros can't change syntax, - There's a limit to how real-time the standard language is, - Compiling to javascript is a nice trick, but if it didn't rely on GC it could compile to webassembly, which is better, - Ask any advanced python developer: Indentation for syntax is a bad idea at scale. Hell, have you ever used YAML? What Rust does is a revolution because they solved the problem of memory safety without garbage collection with the Borrow Checker.
The knock-on effects are GARGANTUAN. This was a hard problem to solve, and it makes the language more complex to learn, but it unlocks all the language's superpowers.
If you 'cheat' with a GC, you get nothing. Nim started its life, just as most languages did with a GC, and the efforts to keep the syntax the same while offering alternatives are greatly compromised. It's far easier to add GC/RC to a low-level language than it is to remove it from a high-level one, where the whole ecosystem relies upon this behvaviour. Of COURSE I know about Nim's plugabble GC options. That doesn't impress me at all (though Araq's effort is to be commended). In Nim they are compiler options, in Rust they're libraries. The difference is vital. For example, at a per-variable level, I can choose to reference count with https://doc.rust-lang.org/std/sync/struct.Arc.html if I so wish (I rarely need to because the borrow checker is magic). If you want python, you can have it inside a Rust macro, sort of like this https://crates.io/crates/inline-python because rust macros CAN change syntax.
With Macros and no GC, you can rebuild ANY FEATURE inside Rust, the floor of the abstraction is the metal, and the ceiling is the sky. This is what Rust is all about: full power to the developer, no compromises.
My video on this topic for those interested is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuMXWc0xrK0 I love both languages, but I can only see one language being the standard next 40 years, and demonstrably so can Linux, Microsoft, Cloudflare, Discord, and many others. |