Fred evaluated several programming languages for a new project based on requirements of safety, portability, performance, expressiveness and elegance. The top candidates were Rust, Go and Nim. Nim is a multi-paradigm language created in 2005 with a focus on portability across operating systems and CPUs. It uses a garbage collector for memory management and supports features like generics, metaprogramming and concurrency.

1. FredAtBootstrap
http://bootstrap.me.uk
https://dev.to/redfred7
Fred

5. Quest for a new language
Requirements:
● Safe
● Portable
● Performant
● Expressive
● Elegant
Candidates:
1. Rust
2. Go
3. Nim

7. ● 2005: Andreas Rumpf
● Community-driven
● Imperative
● Multi-paradigm
● Current release: 1.0.2
Origins

8. © Nim In Action, Dominik Picheta, Manning Publications, 2016
Portability

9. ● nim c cc:gcc myproject.nim
● nim c --cpu:i386 --os:linux --compileOnly --genScript
myproject.nim
● nim c --cpu:arm --os:linux myproject.nim
● nim c -d:mingw myproject.nim
● nim c --os:nintendoswitch myproject.nim
--passC="-I$DEVKITPRO/libnx/include"
--passL="-specs=$DEVKITPRO/libnx/switch.specs
-L$DEVKITPRO/libnx/lib -lnx"
Compilation

10. ● FFI
● Wrapping code or libraries (see next slide)
● c2nim = Parse a C file and generate equivalent
Nim code
Interoperability with C-family
languages

11. ● Non-tracing GC
● Can be customised
○ GC_setMaxPause(MaxPauseInUs: int)
○ GC_step(us: int, strongAdvice = false, stackSize = -1)
● Can be turned off
○ GC_disable()
Garbage Collection

12. Tooling
● $> choosenim 0.12
● $> nimble install nake
● Sublime, vim, VS Code, Aporia Editor

13. Nim Basics

14. Statically typed + variable state

15. Functions - classic return

16. Functions - implicit return

17. Functions - returning result

18. Functions - style agnostic calls

19. Functions - UFC

20. Function: overloading

21. Generics

22. First-class Functions

23. Modules
person.nim
main.nim

24. Modules

25. Functional programming
Side-effect checking
Built-in functional style

26. Multi-tasking &
Asynchronous coding

27. Multi-threading

28. Async + Futures

29. Async Await

30. Metaprogramming

31. Templates

32. Macros
● Modify the
AST
● See example

33. Macros

34. Macros
Compile-time function execution
(CTFE)
Nim in Action, Dominik Picheta, Manning
Publications 2016

35. Compile-time Function
Execution
proc fillString(): string =
result = ""
echo("Generating string")
for i in 0 .. 4:
result.add($i)
const count = fillString()

36. NimScript
Embedded scripts
let script1 = compileScript("script1.nims")
let result = script1.call

37. Other features
- Deferred code execution
- Iterators
- staticExec
- {.emit.}
-
- Asm

38. Why Nim?
❏ Portability
❏ High Performance
❏ Compatibility
❏ Excellent type system
❏ Syntactic sugar
❏ Strong Concurrency & Parallelism

39. Learn more!
http://nim-lang.org/
https://hookrace.net/blog