You may be right... I wouldn't call Nim's community vibrant though.
18 karma · joined August 5, 2017
The point is the compiler has more and more cruft that makes it increasingly more complex and increasingly unreliable. It also makes it so that bugs are harder and harder to fix. Not to mention that it's basically impossible to track what is going on with the language at any given point in time because there is no roadmap or updated status. It also doesn't help that certain folks like to create ten GitHub issues and RFCs for every perceived slight in the language.
Once again, the problem boils down to a complete lack of leadership or interest in running the show - and instead of empowering the community to make that happen, leadership sits back and acts like everything is great and perfect and pats themselves on the back. When someone complains that it is not, leadership finds a way to defend itself and turn sentiment against the person complaining. It happens over and over again and it's why Nim isn't a success story like languages that actually have empowered communities and leaders that are interested in leading and not just collecting book revenues / making .io games, etc... while actively gatekeeping those who would like to get involved in making things better.
Try to advocate for replacing any of dom's tools / software packages and see what happens. Try to advocate for taking Nim in a direction counter to what dom perceives as the right one, even though they no longer contribute to the language anymore besides telling people to fix their broken software they're no longer willing to maintain, or to throw their weight around in RFCs / IRC.
I'm not even including the horrible software they've authored and cargo culted into the language's ecosystem and tooling. That should be enough of an offense to be removed from any decision-making role.
Are there experienced programmers in the Nim community, sure? Are they able to fix Nim with Nim's leadership in place? Doubtful in my mind based on history.
Also, I apologize if it seemed like I was evangelizing Nimskull or suggesting folks switch to it. I agree it is in no shape to serve a replacement for Nim presently, and may not ever be.
1) Nim's leadership is awful and has always been historically. Those in charge of managing the community are more interested in their personal reputation's and resumes than they are actually contributing working software to the language's ecosystem. Even the BDFL treats Nim like their own personal compiler R&D playground. There are so many broken features in Nim which never see the light of day or never get removed.
2) Continuing to expand on the point above, the Nim compiler has become insanely difficult to work on. As more and more half-baked features have been added to the language, the situation has only worsened. There are many would-be contributors who have come into the community only to leave completely frustrated or appalled by the lack of interest in improving the situation from those leading the community.
3) The development path is driven by leadership and not the community, and leadership has no plan. This was extremely evident last year when Araq and others were asked for a roadmap for Nim and they admitted to not having one, and basically wrote one up in a forum thread. Araq and dom96 and a few others, especially those who have been brave enough to actually deploy Nim code in production (looking at you status.im) tend to dictate what gets worked on or fixed. There is no coordination amongst folks working on initiatives. You can look at the `fusion` project, which was started by Nim's leadership, drew contributors in, and then was abandoned by leadership while maintainers were left on the hook to keep things afloat until they too dumped the project.
Things have gotten so bad, that a hard fork has been in development since last year, and many of the more senior community members or those who have been around for a bit have migrated there: https://github.com/nim-works/nimskull
Nim's community now consists of mostly new members or folks who weren't really active in it before, but maybe used Nim. Of course, the leadership remains in place, but there are only a handful of folks remaining that have been around for more than a year or two. Mostly those who bit the bullet on using Nim in production or built large projects with Nim and are stuck maintaining them.
My advice would be to look elsewhere.
Another great section would be how to identify a pairing that is less than ideal / problematic.
The current product I work on has had a team of - count em - two developers for the past year. I'm the one that is full-stack, so I get to help the less-experienced developer work on our frontend, while I have minimal time to work on the backend solo (for the most part).
My pair programmer partner, also has no interest in learning the new dev-sec-ops our company is pushing - so I get to also solo all of that work.
It's an extremely frustrating / soul-crushing scenario to be in. It's basically punishment for exhibiting competence and willingness.
It's a situation I'm hopefully out of in the next month.
You can have a junior dev, and hand hold, but it also requires effort on the part of the junior dev / a desire to learn and grow. Without that, the exercise is futile.
IMO - pair programming is over-hyped. I often find that I produce better, more reliable code, with the more space and more time I am given. I agree that pair-programming can rock in certain circumstances - but you need developers that have a certain level of synergy, you can't force it.
I really do value that feedback. I have also stopped using almost all forms of social media. I can't drop twitter - but that is because I value a lot of the content I read there (mostly related to game development).
I've also learned that I need to focus on what is important to my health, and less, on what is important to others.
These are hard lessons for some individuals to learn. It's amusing - because very much of my behavior is self-centered.
I think the key lesson I've learned throughout my continual growing process, is that thoughtless compassion and service to others, grants you the ability to also be compassionate towards yourself.
Living in your problems, hating life, focusing on negatives all the time, wraps your head around your own negativity and dissatisfaction with life.
It's a fine balance that needs to be maintained, and it's easy to slip up in that regard, but I think it's also critical in healing and recovery.
And even then - living this and thinking it, are two totally different things.
I've been on and off anti-depressants since I was sixteen, and I'm 33 now. My self-confidence has been basically destroyed, and I've kind of been just a shell of a human being ever since middle school. I've never figured myself out, and I've never felt like I've had time to, or the space and energy.
I've been in and out of therapy, I've been to rehab, and I've seen lots of professionals - psychiatrists and therapists.
My current psychiatrist is helping me a lot - but it also seems like it's two steps forward, and three backwards. During the spring, I gained a lot of confidence, and felt like I was back on track, and it only took one thing going haywire in my plans, for everything to once again fall off the rails.
Like you - I finally broke down to my parents (who have been amazingly supportive over the years) - and this isn't the first time I've broken down in front of them - but hopefully it's the last.
I've decided that the career path I've sought for myself, which is the line of work they both worked in, isn't for me.
My main goal right now, which I'm going to need their help with (because at this point accomplishing basic tasks like opening my email / checking my physical mail - are terrifying to me), is to sell the house I purchased several years ago. This thing has been a boat anchor, and has helped keep me stuck by requiring a certain level of monthly income.
After that, I hope to quit my job and set out across the country to do some soul searching. Hopefully via the house sale and savings I've accrued, I can keep myself afloat for a while, while I pursue new opportunities.
My goal is to enter a new industry, that is arguably more rigorous than the one I'm leaving, but I feel like my current position has contributed quite a bit to my deterioration in mental health, and that it's not what I love - or even want - to do.
Ultimately, I keep myself going by remembering the alternative is not an option. I try to think that things will get better, but it's difficult at times. The one thing I can always rely on fortunately (and this isn't true for many), is family and my close friends. Networking is very important, and so is remembering that everyone, including you and me, deserves to be happy.
Your comment on the other hand...
Edit -
Sorry - that was rude. I should have elaborated.
Transpiling is a specific type of compilation that involves two languages with a similar level of abstraction.
Compilation involves languages with different levels of abstraction.
Nim offers a much higher-level abstraction than C, thus you could consider the process of converting Nim to C, a compilation process rather than a transpilation process.
Its standard library is improving with each release, and is already equivalent to what you expect from most modern programming languages. It contains flaws and inconsistencies, but it is being worked on and stabilized for a 1.0 release of the language. The ecosystem is small - but growing.
Some of the great things about Nim -
1) Ability to interface with C/C++/Obj-C/JS
2) Can compile to any of ^
3) Meta-programming
4) Python like syntax
5) Small binaries
6) Can compile to WASM via emscripten
I've built AWS lambda jobs with Nim by interfacing with Python, as prototypes for work, but I've never been able to leverage the language in production. I really only use it professionally to replace personal shell scripts or other tasks I've previously automated.
That said - Nim has a bright future - it needs to mature and hit 1.0 and it could really use some more interest as well as sponsorship.
Github - https://github.com/zacharycarter