What would be really killer is if it could have bindings to Java. Then one could take advantage of the JVM being present everywhere w/o having to do a separate compilation for every platform.
Note that nimrod compiles to C, and your JVM may be implemented in C or C++. So for the measly gain of not having to run a command on the destination platform (nimrod c name.nim) you are bringing in the runtime performance drawbacks of the whole JVM and requiring a further layer of abstraction.
Plus bytecode doesn't mean a program will run at all, look at all the java programs which run on android without modification, oh, wait...
I'm in CompBio and the sense I get is that it's a lot easier to get someone to try your tool if all you have to do is provide them the jar which they just have to click on and it runs. Whereas with compilation, you first have to make sure you have all the platforms covered and then force the potential user to select the right executable for the platform.
I don't think forcing potential users to compile a program is going lower the barrier much. A lot of the users could be biologists and they would likely not know how to compile the source. I do agree that the software should be open source.
In my experience, biologists are allergic to the command line. They need web interfaces.
In the case where they don't mind using the command line, providing Linux x64 binaries (along with the source) is plenty sufficient.
Note that I'm not saying they shouldn't distribute the jar if that's the kind of game they want to play. I'm saying they shouldn't restrict themselves to distributing a jar.
> I do agree that the software should be open source.
Me too. But it's not an ideological point. I wasn't kidding when I said that, in all probability, I'll have to fix whatever software I'm using. Or at the very least, read the source code to understand what it is that they've implemented. (You'd think it'd be clear from the methods section in their paper...)
Plus bytecode doesn't mean a program will run at all, look at all the java programs which run on android without modification, oh, wait...