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by BerislavLopac 588 days ago
I've always been curious why Nim never took off as the solution for use cases like this. It combines the simplicity and clarity of Python-like syntax with the performance of a natively compiled language, which looks like the best of both worlds.
1 comments

Python strength is not the syntax but the standard and 3rd party libraries.
3rd party libraries don't spring from nowhere. And no language starts having one in abundance. People have to be motivated enough to write all those libraries in the first place and a lot of them are written just to use python syntax over C Code.

I'm not saying it's the only reason to choose python now but it's definitely among the biggest reasons.

Not necessarily. Python had the best C-API, that was the main reason. If Nim or Lisp copied that C-API people might move.

It is safe to say in 2024 that people do not want FFIs.

Yes but we're still getting to the same point.

Why not just call the C code you've already written in C ? Because they would rather use python (or python like) syntax.

I don't think we actually disagree here. Even your point about the better C-API doesn't indicate that syntax wasn't a deciding factor, just that one of several options had better compatibility.