Prologue: A web framework written in Nim(github.com) |
Prologue: A web framework written in Nim(github.com) |
It's disappointing that Nim has not (perhaps cannot, for backwards compatibility) learned the same lesson here that most other modern languages have, and used explicit nilability embedded in the type system.
And to preempt the argument that "you can't, for performance reasons!", you could do the same thing as Rust does and explicitly opt-in to having your code break if something is nil, via a call like `.unwrap()` which the compiler may optimize away.
[1] https://www.infoq.com/presentations/Null-References-The-Bill...
What!? What that even means? Value types can't be nil in nim-lang, these are always initialized, but you can use Option[T] when you need it.
If you mean reference types (`ref`) hopefully this PR will land soon https://github.com/nim-lang/Nim/pull/15287.
Likewise, your type system can prevent you from using uninitialized values in other languages, without the need for Option (and indeed the unwrap() call you imply you would have used) from being needed.
Though yes, I'm glad to see this is being addressed :).
Only thing it needs now is a compile to CSS solution and you would never have to leave the language. Its a very thurough language in that regard.
It also needs a strong GUI framework for desktop and mobile apps, as well, but still, its very fully featured! My hunch in this area is that you could just compile to Electron/NativeScript/React Native as a relatively 'quick' solution to these problems.
I'm excited to see where this language goes. I'm pretty tempted to use it in production to replace Python for some things and may find it more expansive due to its flexibility of compile targets.
My only gripe (and its relatively small) is I don't like its compiler directive syntax using the `{.directive.}` style, its a little ugly and noisy to me, I'd prefer something like rust's `#[]` (I think this is actually how you use a Rust macro, but its a nice syntax regardless)
Not enough to stop me from thinking the language has some real upside and potential, though.
I've yet to encounter a small enough project with low risk where I could get away with trying something completely new, but I'm looking forward to trying Nim in the (hopefully very near) future.
One negative thing that stood out to me was that commit messages are sometimes really bad, like "break" or "let me try". I'm not trying to bash the author, but I feel it's somewhat unprofessional.
Most personal projects of this scale are labors of love and I suspect most people wouldn't mind nitpicks given in good faith if it means exposing the project to a wider audience. Though I also suspect they will be triaged towards the bottom of the pile :)
Why risk the naming confusion? Doing a search for "prologue language" yields millions of Prolog results on both DDG and Google.
Nim always was a bit lacking in webdev but with Prologue and Basolato, the web is suddenly looking much more interesting.
E: I do like it, though. Don't want to bash on the project for no reason, just would prefer it if the maintainer tried to have better commit messages!
A lazy scan right now shows over a hundred "make tests green again", a dozen "fix(up|)", handful of "WIP", etc. And beyond that a huge chunk are just "update <something>". Even with ~20k commits you can catch duplicates in a single unlucky bisect session.
I think I've come to the conclusion that /we/ in this subthread may be the problem though. Loads of projects are like that, and hardly anybody else cares. I suspect it just depends on how you are treating your VCS; I think it tells a story, others seem to think it just a snapshotting tool.
Powerful to me would be “able to create systems & applications in half the time compared to...” :)
Also, nim is a mess. Very poorly designed language. I tried it a couple of years ago and was repelled by its syntax and attempts to solve every single problem for you.
That is standard for Micro service/Web framework. 2 functions and a router and you are now "Open source Web framework" author on github.
What are you talking about?
https://github.com/filcuc/DOtherSide
https://github.com/filcuc/nimqml
LGPL compliance is an important consideration owing to Qt's being LGPL licensed, but it's actually not a big deal despite there being a lot of FUD around it:
https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.en.html#LGPLStaticVsDyn...
That said, I do find the placement of Nim pragmas to be cumbersome, resulting in really long lines or awkward line breaks. I wish we could place the pragma declaration on the line before procedures.
proc callme(formatstr: cstring) {.exportc: "callMe", varargs.}I find many of Rust's macros annoying for a similar reason, since they'll often be at the root of a module or function but for various complicated reasons can't have leading expressions - you can't make user macros that look like `macro_rules! your_macro_name {...}` or control flow like `match expr {...}` - so they're in an uncanny valley that's just as distracting.
> Nimx officially supports Linux, MacOS, Windows, Android, iOS, Javascript (with Nim JS backend) and Asm.js/WebAssembly (with Nim C backend and Emscripten).
Me too. I think the `{.directive.}` style comes from pascal[1], but put it at the end of the procedure definition line. Lines that are too long are not easy to read. It would be better if each directive syntax had its own line.
[1] https://www.freepascal.org/docs-html/current/prog/progse5.ht...
Why?
proc hello(greeting: string): string {.noSideEffect.}
func hello(greeting: string): stringI'm not bringing it down by being honest in how I feel. My praise for nim is genuine and forthright, and I've recommended many others looking to get more performance coming from a Python background give it an honest look. This is completely subjective, but I don't like 'ugliness' in a syntax. Sometimes it can be changed, sometimes it can't, and it is what it is, I get that, doesn't mean I won't mention it. There's a certain beauty to how a syntax looks when being written, IMO. Why else would developers spend so much time on theming, font choices etc for their editors? :)
tl;dr I'm not one to shy away from giving honest feedback
Real world example: Once there was a new browser from Mozilla called Firebird. There was also a previously established RDBMS called Firebird. No one believed the browser and the RDBMS would be confused, but none the less Firebird the Browser is now called Firefox. The reason is a little confused - Mozilla at the time claimed something like "Firefox was only the code name", but I think they would have left it alone if the people from Firebird RDBMS hadn't asked them to rethink the naming.
Edit: also, searching for "prolog web framework" gets you stuff about using prolog for web application development. So, yeah, naming is not great and your assertion is not entirely correct.
The first few hits I got were:
* https://www.metalevel.at/prolog/web
* https://github.com/Anniepoo/weblog
* http://www.pathwayslms.com/swipltuts/html/index.html
And no sniff of this new framework.
Prolog is a made up word, an abbreviation for "programmation en logique". Prologue means the introductory part.
So why the confusion? I believe prolog is an excellent name for a logic PL and prologue is too for a web framework. Why change it?
I could probably come with dozen more names if I knew more about the project and after a bit of brainstorming.
Same for rails, add "ruby".
"go" is also a fun one…
there are also the z3-integration related checks which might even apply to index bounds or eventually other invariants, so this kind of safety is important for Araq and Nim https://nim-lang.org/docs/drnim.html
For example, rebase's default output includes the previous and next commit messages when you pause to edit a commit.
Perhaps, but there's more than just returns. Dealing with most C code there's a fair bit of pointer passing and manipulation. It's nice being able to deal directly with C code and not have to worry about the impedance mismatch, but still be able to move up the type system. It's more a pragmatic choice.
> Likewise, your type system can prevent you from using uninitialized values in other languages, without the need for Option (and indeed the unwrap() call you imply you would have used) from being needed.
In this case, mostly its just me not using the type system well. :-) But that's the price I pay for a using a flexible language I can readily use in embedded work. NPE's really don't cause me any headaches compared to most of the other aspects of integrating heavily with C code in embedded systems.
There's a culture of reflexive criticism in intelligent communities, and I think it has negative side effects we haven't acknowledged. Yeah, it feels good to give one's full-throated opinion without bothering to edit oneself, but we build a better world with more encouragement and more restraint when it comes to nitpicking.
Personally something that looks so silly stresses me out enough to either not use the feature or not use the language, so I’m kind of happy for the comment.
You may think that’s shallow, but if I have a hundred languages to choose from, a few of which check all the boxes, I’ll go with those.
Is this a typo? I would certainly hope that a search for "prolog web framework" would not include results about a web framework written in Nim named "Prologue"
"Prolog" and "prologue" are completely different words with different meanings-- they are only homophones. It's not really analogous (at all) to the Firebird situation where the names of the projects had the exact same name, same spelling and all.
If this project were named "Sea", do you think people would conflate it with the "C" programming language?
Unfortunately not. It's caused by fuzzy matching and happens with other words (and languages) too. Annoying but I don't think we should start avoiding certain words because google search (and some people apparently) can't make the distinction.
> searching for "prolog web framework" gets you stuff about using prolog for web application development ... And no sniff of this new framework.
The comment I replied to described that they searched for "prolog web framework", which is NOT the name of this project. The name of this project is "prologue".
"prolog" != "prologue"
Searching for "prolog web framework" should not return results about the "Prologue" web framework. What the commenter I replied to described is the correct behavior.
Edit: I understand that contrived searches might be constructed to fall victim to fuzzy matching, but what the comment I replied to confirmed is that it's probably not an issue in this case.
"Sea" and "C" are not the same ballpark. "Prolog" is a subset of "Prologue." This is more like "C" and "C#", and I can tell you that it is actually a problem.
So was your edit on the comment I replied to (repeated below) a typo?
> Edit: also, searching for "prolog web framework" gets you stuff about using prolog for web application development. So, yeah, naming is not great and your assertion is not entirely correct.
This is an anecdote in favor of fuzzy search not really being an issue.
> If someone tells me about this "prologue web framework" I could easily transliterate that as "prolog".
If someone told me about that “C programming language” I could easily transliterate that as “sea” or misremember it as “B”.
These are contrived situations. Imagine someone told me about “Prologue: a web framework written in Nim”, and I transliterated that to “prolog web framework”. If I searched that and it didn’t come up with a web framework written in Nim, I would think critically about the issue and change my search to “prolog web framework Nim” and would find this project.
It would be so silly to change the name or avoid the name of a completely unrelated project when ideally anyone faced with the issue would have the critical thinking skills to adjust and refine their search terms so it was not an issue.
So, it really depends on your search engine. Using 3 different ones, assuming my English spelling is less than stellar, only looking at the first page:
"Prolog Web framework"
Duck Duck Go/ Bing/ Google: all prolog
"Prologe Web framework"
Duck Duck Go: 5th hit is Prolog based
Bing: 7th hit is prolog
Google: first hit prolog
So yeah - there is a possibility of confusion.
> If someone told me about that “C programming language” I could easily transliterate that as “sea” or misremember it as “B”.
If you knew nothing about programming and technology. I counter that if someone told be about "Prologue" I would assume "Prolog". I wonder why "Nim" would come in to it? I don't know about you, but I don't go around saying "I wrote apps in MFC in C++ in the 90's", or "I write ASP.Net applications in C#". I think the framework stands alone, surely? The language is an implementation detail, and I guess Prologue might one day be ported to another platform if it is really all that good?
The issue is that your position is people something like - should be intelligent enough to know what is meant by a phrase. My position is that you are massively underestimating the issue with the words basically looking and sounding the same. Your attempt at a counter is a weak argument about how people might dramatically misremember facts anyway.
I think I looked at your history, and this is not the first time you got in to a debate like this, so I'm out... it's a bad name - the creator should probably rethink it or prefix "Nim" to make it unique, but whatever.
No, I was asking if it was a typo because I interpreted it as being a counter-point to the point you were trying to make. Here it is again, emphasis mine:
> Edit: also, searching for "prolog web framework" gets you stuff about using prolog for web application development. [...] And no sniff of this new framework.
I interpreted this as being critical of fuzzy matching, but I realize now you may have been giving an example of a transliteration a hypothetical searcher would make themselves, which makes more sense. Since what you described is what I consider to be the ideal behavior of a search engine, I thought it was possibly you meant to say "also, searching for 'prologue web framework'". I'm sorry I misunderstood.
> The language is an implementation detail [...]
I don't personally agree with this. If the language is important to the project (in this case, it is since this is a web framework for Nim), I would probably make a point to add that context.
> I think I looked at your history, and this is not the first time you got in to a debate like this, so I'm out...
Sincerely asking (it sounds snarky but I don't know how else to ask): is there something wrong about the way I'm arguing my position? I am not trying to be rude or anything, I just sincerely disagree. Would it be better if I just conceded or simply stopped responding?
> it's a bad name - the creator should probably rethink it or prefix "Nim" to make it unique, but whatever.
Disagree. I suppose it's my fault for arguing what clearly comes down to your opinion.
Edit:
> My position is that you are massively underestimating the issue with the words basically looking and sounding the same.
I totally understand the hypothetical issues that can come up in this kind of situation.
My position is simply that in this case the arguments against using this name are contrived and furthermore are resolved with the slightest pinch of context.