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Comment by adenozine | Hacker News Reader

Sidebar: I’m excited to see Nim get LLVM support via nlvm. I haven’t read this document yet but I just remembered that Nim is an advancing language and checked GitHub for new developments.

It seems to be that Crystal has made some leaps and bounds in picking up some of the Ruby slack, though I see Nim lagging behind of taking up some Python users.

I’d feel 100000x more comfortable as a potential user if they had a little more corporate support and some mainstream use cases.

I think I’ll take this post as the wake up call to take Nim more seriously in my own hobby programming. I’ve had my eye on it since they changed the name and I discovered it; but I didn’t realize until today people were building such thorough resources.

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Nim uses GCC and works very well. Nim is among the fastest languages both in runtime and compilation time also thanks to GCC.

GCC supports way more architectures than LLVM.

Lots of exciting work also being done in libs, e.g. chronos[1] (just one example), which is an alternative to std/asyncdispatch[2].

[1] https://forum.nim-lang.org/t/8950

[&] https://github.com/status-im/nim-chronos#readme

[2] https://nim-lang.org/docs/asyncdispatch.html

Yeah they need at least one more big corporate sponsor besides Status.

"One more" because, in your view, it's important to have 2+ or it's problematic to have Status as a/your-only sponsor? Just curious.

The only big sponsor being a cryptocoin startup doesn't inspire a lot of confidence.

On technical merits or.......?

We use Nim to prototype many things (though not all things), and in many cases they go into production with `-d:release` just fine:

https://github.com/orgs/status-im/repositories

A good example is nimbus-eth2, which is one of the (The?) most energy-efficient Beacon Chain clients, with real money at stake:

https://github.com/status-im/nimbus-eth2#readme

Whether or not you agree with the many people who think cryptocurrency is the biggest grifting scam to ever grace the internet or not, the bottom line is that as long as they think that and as long as Status is the sole corporate interest behind Nim, then it faces real and several difficulty in picking up steam.

The reality is that most people are not going to use cryptocurrency anytime in the next 10 years. Landlords won't take it, grocery stores won't take it, the whole thing is a mind-boggling waste of time and energy.

Even still, while the tech Status is producing might be cool, surely you can't be so naive as to overlook the obvious tinge it places on other potential Nim adopters.

I'm a crotchedy 50+ yo fart, so pay me no mind if what I say bothers you.

I'm a 45+ yo fart, and all my learning, experiences, and talents have in many recent years been and are being poured wholeheartedly into blockchain/crypto-related tech (which is all Open Source software), no regrets on my part whatsoever.

   you can't be so naive as to overlook the obvious tinge it places on other potential Nim adopters

I've done a lot of soul-searching on this front, and I can't even conceive of a "tinge" on rational potential Nim adopters.

41 yo fart. Rational at times. The tinge, in general, comes from the huge number of crypto projects that are indistinguishable from Ponzis, vehicles for what would be a financial crime if done with regulated instruments, or just the counterproductive inclusion of a blockchain. Nim itself never felt tinged to me back when I tried (and enjoyed) it. But I generally won't touch anything "crypto".

   Rational at times

I try to be, especially when on the clock :D

   Nim itself never felt tinged to me back when I tried (and enjoyed) it. But I generally won't touch anything "crypto".

Fair enough (I guess). But if you work/play-with with Nim these days, and the libs available from https://nimble.directory/, do you feel you're "touching crypto"? If so, why?

   huge number of crypto projects that are indistinguishable from Ponzis, vehicles for what would be a financial crime if done with regulated instruments, or just the counterproductive inclusion of a blockchain

Well... I feel I stand little chance of convincing you of anything, but feel free to checkout the status-im GitHub org I've linked to previously, and you're also very welcome to ask Status core contributors the most scorching questions you can think of via our desktop/mobile app, or on our Discord server, or on https://discuss.status.im/.

From the perspective of an individual, I have no qualms with it, but that doesn’t matter.

I haven’t had to report to a traditional manager for some years, but I can imagine the guffawing of bosses I’ve worked for in the past if I was pitching Nim for something and explaining the lay of the land. Especially since those big buy/sell decisions are often made by non-technical people.

How am I supposed to convince someone to take a ride on Nim when they could point me at Go, or Clojure, or Elixir, etc? I’m just pointing out there’s a lot of choices with very strong corporate third-party adopters.

I’m not an advocate for the way things are, but it’s just a fact of the world that ecosystems with strong corporate backing have a higher likelihood of survival and success.

I hope Nim succeeds, as I assume you do also. I hope you personally succeed. Crypto though, I kinda just hope it all goes away soon, and people look to change society in more pragmatic ways. I know a young fella in a PhD program, goes to my church, he’s getting a tooth pulled because he can’t afford dental coverage. It’s not the fiat currency that’s the problem. Crypto won’t fix these kinds of problems. Anyhow.

If the Status team ever comes around Indiana I’ll take you all out to dinner!

I did not feel it with Nim at all, so I guess the team have done a thorough job of separating concerns. I'd happily write more Nim actually, just checked and the compiler is still there :).

Thanks I'll drop in there some time, always up for learning something new and it doesn't sound like it's ... the laser eyes crowd.

64 yo fart here. Just chipping to say that!

My own experience and interest in cryptocurrency is zero. But my interest in Nim is .GT. 0.

I will say it doesn't bother me personally about the current sponsorship, but I see your point. The linked book is in my reading list - it is the sort of online book that I would love to see professionally typeset for hardcopy.

Because it's a single company in an industry infamous for an insane boom-bust cycle, insane levels of fraud, insane levels of criminality. I don't want to develop on a platform whose finances rest on something so shaky. For me it isn't about the morality of crypto "tainting" Nim somehow; it is a simple perception that Status might disappear tomorrow for any number of reasons, and then what happens to Nim?

Maybe come discuss your concerns with us on https://discuss.status.im or Status' Discord server? Looking forward to it!

> it is a simple perception that Status might disappear tomorrow for any number of reasons, and then what happens to Nim?

Status only started sponsoring Nim in 2018[1]. Before that Nim was doing just fine. So the answer to your question is: nothing is going to happen to Nim if Status disappears.

1 - https://our.status.im/status-partners-with-the-team-behind-t...

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