In what cases is Nim a better option than Rust? Would be great if anyone with more experience can share more information.

This is subjective, but I prefer Nim's python-like scoping syntax; ie no semilonons nor curlybraces. Someone else in this thread posted a comment to the opposite effect! That said, I don't see a compelling class of projects to use it on instead of Rust.

I'll consider Nim next time I'm looking at making a python project. However - most of the times this happens is if I'm making a web backend or doing something numerical, where Python has a library advantage.

GordonS

Funny how personal preference with regard to some syntax is so polarising - I'm coming from a primarily C# background and while Nim looks interesting, I find the lack of semicolon line endings and the whitespace-based scopes, to be really off-putting!

cb321

Syntactic indentation has been very polarizing since at least Python 0.9 (and maybe others) in the late 80s. Like ()s in Nim, Haskell also has a "both brackets or whitespace" kind of vibe.

But, yeah, choice lets different parts of code bases differ. No two ways around that. A ton of people had knee-jerk resistance to Python's lexical style but "got over it" eventually.

There really is a lot more to Nim than just this (its generic/template/macro metaprogramming, user-defined operators, GC options, speed, etc.). Many, many things can be done as libraries that would require direct compiler support in other languages. I would encourage you to give it a try.

GordonS

> There really is a lot more to Nim than just this

I've actually just been skimming some tutorials and docs, and wow, you're not wrong! I'm impressed - Nim seems to be rammed with features, but also easy to get started with (as long as you ignore some of the more advanced stuff).

I've recently been trying to find time and motivation to start learning Rust, but I have to say that (even with horrible indentation syntax :p ) Nim looks really compelling too...

cb321

If a little CLI app to do something useful (instead of say, some shell script/batch file or something) is your entry point then you might try cligen [1]. Everyone is different, but from many and varied reports (e.g. in this very thread [2]), it is hugely more probable that you get up & running with some basic skills in like 30 minutes to 4 hours or so with Nim than you would with Rust. Nim really seems to "scale up gracefully" for most.

[1] https://github.com/c-blake/cligen [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25596285