What's the Situation with the Nim Programming Language These Days?

Introduction
I've written about Nim in the past, but it's been a while. So, I decided to do a deep dive on it this time as the language seems to have evolved a lot since then, plus I had promised that I'd keep an eye on it. So, let's look at this language anew and explore how it's faring these days.

Why Nim and why it's worth learning about it
Nim has been around for almost a decade and a half now but it remains in relative obscurity. So, why should you learn about it nevertheless, especially when there are other, more established languages out there? Well, Nim is super fast (it compiles to C, so you can expect similar performance), it's very intuitive in its syntax (especially if you are coming from a Python background), and it's versatile. It also has a committed team without a big company behind it, making it the de facto underdog of programming languages.

Despite its hardships, it has managed to get a production-ready version out and find some niche use cases to make it stand out from the crowd. Its documentation is pretty good (much better than many other languages' docs) while its official website even has some comprehensive tutorials for learning Nim. It has a variety of packages and it's constantly growing in its codebase, making it a very promising language still, against all odds.

Nim from a Pythonista's perspective
Although Python is hardly a "real" programming language and shouldn't be compared to languages like Nim that do some real heavy lifting, these days it's in vogue. It's a fairly decent scripting language ideal for someone who's never learned the ins and outs of computers and how they work. Perhaps that's why it's so popular today. What Python does well is its syntax and the simplicity of its code. Some call it pseudocode that runs and they aren't wrong. Once you get accustomed to its idiosyncrasies, Python is fairly straightforward to work with while its code is very similar to the pseudocode version of an algorithm. Nim adopts this attribute of Python, making its code very intuitive and comprehensible, even to newcomers to the language.

So, for a Pythonista, Nim will seem strangely familiar and should be easy to understand from the very beginning. This was probably a design decision, to make the barrier of entry to the language as low as possible. It's noteworthy that the language under the hood is quite different though as the memory management, the indexing, and the whole approach to variable-setting are closer to that of low-level languages. So, it may still require some effort to learn Nim properly, even if you have mastered Python.

Nim from a C programmer's perspective
As Nim is somewhat closer to C than any other language, it also is easy for a C language user. After all, the Nim compiler gives you the option to see the C code of each Nim program you create. If you are used to the curly brackets that C features in its programs, Nim gives you the option of writing your scripts similarly, using parentheses instead. This way, the barrier to entry to this language shouldn't be too high in this case either. The fact that it uses 0-point indexing like C and similar data structures makes Nim familiar even to C programmers.

Nim's compiler is much better, however than that of C and any other low-level language. It can pinpoint issues so that you don't have to worry about the executables once they are created. It can also provide you with some useful feedback to make troubleshooting easier. Additionally, memory management is better than C and overall it's easier to work with Nim as it's more high-level as a language.

Nim from a data professional's perspective
From a data professional's perspective, Nim is getting there. Even if its base package doesn't support any complex data structures that lend themselves to real-world data (like Julia does, for example), it has a plethora of external packages that do the trick. So, the language seems to be data-ready right now, even if it's hard to see it competing with Python or Julia for data-related work, right now. After all, beyond the coding capabilities of a language, other factors come into play, such as the language's integration with Jupyter notebooks. Kotlin integrates smoothly (even if it is a compiled language like Nim), but Nim's integration is iffy. Some commands like the one requiring input from the user don't seem to work at all, plus the Jupyter integration module is fairly new, compared to that of other programming languages.

Additionally, Nim doesn't have a large data science community, making it a bit more challenging for a Nim learner from the data science field to feel at home. Although this may change in the future, it seems that only the most committed data scientists can find Nim a valuable tool for analytics-related work. Nevertheless, Nim lends itself to data engineering work as it has various database and data file packages, while its speed makes it ideal for this sort of task.

Nim's role in Cryptography and Cybersecurity
What about cryptography though and cybersecurity in general? Well, in this niche Nim seems to thrive. It has mature libraries for randomness and hashes, while it's fairly easy to code something related to this field from scratch. The fact that it's very fast makes it ideal for this kind of application. Also, Nim's ability to create small executables gives it more flexibility and enables it to emulate "red team" scenarios, so that the "blue team" can better prepare for cyberattacks.

It's a shame that the cybersecurity and cryptography communities aren't as open-minded about alternative programming languages to give Nim a shot. This language has a lot to offer here and it wouldn't be surprising if in the future more applications in these fields find themselves coded in Nim. This is likely going to happen through hobbyists and independent researchers with a knack for programming though.

Nim prospects
Beyond all these facets of Nim, the language seems to have a promising future right now. There are several projects in the works, it has a UI framework, and the number of content creators writing about Nim has increased. More people are becoming aware of the value-add the language offers, while the world's obsession with Python is being challenged as more easy-to-code-in languages enter the coding sphere.

Although it's unlikely it will ever be as popular as the languages that have come to dominate, it's bound to continue and become better as its community grows. Nowadays there are even conferences on Nim and the language seems to become easier to adopt and acknowledge, at least for certain use cases that systems computing. The big milestone, however, would be if Nim enters the world of code learning platforms like CodeAbbey, where people can solve interesting challenges using the language and refine their skills in the process. The fact that it's already on Exercism and Rosetta Code, however, is a step in the right direction.

Final thoughts about Nim
So, there you have it. Nim is a powerful programming language with quite a few things to offer, as it's heading toward version 2.0. Whether it will get a large enough following is up to you as most people tend to shy away from language that doesn't have the backing of a large company or academic institution. Also, it seems that lately there are lots of languages out there, so deciding to commit to this one is even more challenging. Yet, those who have delved into Nim can see its merit and are likely to continue with it. Even if it doesn't make it big like the languages it borrows from, it's bound to stick around and thrive in its niches.
​