The book “Nim in Action” is free until April 18

A few years ago, when I was casting round for a new compiled language to tinker with, I looked at Nim, Go and Crystal.

I thought I'd really like Nim as I was reasonably familiar with Python. But I found it just different enough to be really confusing. Also [at that time anyway. I don't know what the situation is now] I found the documentation pretty sparse and the discussion forum pretty unwelcoming for a newbie. It seemed entirely populated by the people actually responsible for designing the language, mostly discussing really high level arcane aspects of its implementation, which went right over my head.

The general approach to anyone new to the language seemed to be 'RTFM!" --except there wasn't a manual!

So almost everyone involved in the language recommended the 'Nim in Action' book as the de facto manual. I argued with a few people at the time, including the book's author [who came across as a bit of an arrogant arsehole] that; seeing as the book seemed to be pretty much the only recommended beginner's guide to the language, the people behind Nim should bung the author a wodge of cash and make the ebook available for free [as pretty much every other programming language does, in some way or another] if they wanted to attract new users.

Of course, I was [metaphorically] 'downvoted into oblivion' for making this suggestion, with the general theme of the comments being "If you want to learn a language properly, you should be prepared to invest in doing so!"

I thought at the time and I still think that the Nim team really shot themselves in the foot on this one. I'm sure many other people who were potentially interested in Nim but needed a bit of hand-holding to get started did as I did; gave up and went elsewhere, looking for other languages, where the documentation was freely available.

So, as I said at the top. Ironic that, several years down the line, this book is now being given away for free [albeit for a limited time]. A case of 'too little, far too late' [for me anyway].

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PS: This post isn't meant in anyway to be a criticism of Nim itself. I know that most people who use it love it. More a criticism of the non-sensical policy of expecting people to have to fork out cash up front, just to come and kick the tyres of your new language.

PPS: A while later, after I'd moved on from wanting to learn about Nim, I eventually got to see a copy of Nim in Action. Flicking through it, I wasn't all that impressed. It seemed to be pretty much a long-winded tutorial on building one specific project [a Twitter clone, if I remember correctly] rather than a comprehensive introductory guide to the language.