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Comment by akagusu | Hacker News Reader

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akagusu·

I like Nim and I think it is a really powerful language, but I simply don't find a use for it.

If I need to write easy deployable backend apps I go for PHP.

If I need GUI I go with Python and Qt.

If I need to write numerical apps, data science, ML or related things I go for Python.

I use Go for cli apps and http web services.

For highly interactive front-end stuff, JavaScript.

But I simple don't know where Nim fits within my needs.

Any suggestions?

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I'm using Nim to build an experimental kernel, so lots of low-level systems programming [0]. Right now it can boot under UEFI, switch to graphics mode, query some hardware information, create and schedule kernel threads, and a very simple shell (no userspace yet).

In this regard I'd compare it to Zig (which I also tried for kernel programming) and Rust (which I find too complex). The thing that stood out for me about Nim is its elegance. I know it's subjective, but I like how the code "looks and feels."

[0] https://github.com/khaledh/axiom

A few times I've been looking at nim, always thinking of looks nice. Then I consider what libraries I need (most recently (rpc over) websockets, html parsing/manipulating), and can't seem to find them. The language nim is great, unfortunately the ecosystem seems rather in its infancy.

nim is good for cli programs and backend, if you're enough experienced also websites frontend(js target, libraries like karax etc...)

https://github.com/c-blake/cligen can make the CLI integration part pretty frictionless.

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