carterza

You may be right... I wouldn't call Nim's community vibrant though.

The compiler works until you stress the type system or try to take advantage of features that are experimental and then stay that way forever. How many iterations of concepts have we been through at this point? What happened to hot code reloading? Why do we have all these legacy GCs?

The point is the compiler has more and more cruft that makes it increasingly more complex and increasingly unreliable. It also makes it so that bugs are harder and harder to fix. Not to mention that it's basically impossible to track what is going on with the language at any given point in time because there is no roadmap or updated status. It also doesn't help that certain folks like to create ten GitHub issues and RFCs for every perceived slight in the language.

Once again, the problem boils down to a complete lack of leadership or interest in running the show - and instead of empowering the community to make that happen, leadership sits back and acts like everything is great and perfect and pats themselves on the back. When someone complains that it is not, leadership finds a way to defend itself and turn sentiment against the person complaining. It happens over and over again and it's why Nim isn't a success story like languages that actually have empowered communities and leaders that are interested in leading and not just collecting book revenues / making .io games, etc... while actively gatekeeping those who would like to get involved in making things better.

I mean, I have experienced first-hand, dom96 being a jerk directly to me after I spent months of effort building something for the community. I'm not the only one either. If it was just dom96 being a jerk my criticisms might not hold water, but the problem is far deeper than that.

Try to advocate for replacing any of dom's tools / software packages and see what happens. Try to advocate for taking Nim in a direction counter to what dom perceives as the right one, even though they no longer contribute to the language anymore besides telling people to fix their broken software they're no longer willing to maintain, or to throw their weight around in RFCs / IRC.

dom96 simply needs to go - they are nothing but self-serving and they cause more damage to the Nim community than any other member by far.

I'm not even including the horrible software they've authored and cargo culted into the language's ecosystem and tooling. That should be enough of an offense to be removed from any decision-making role.

I'm not sure there is one - but I guess a language where you're not constantly dealing with horrible error message, an under-specified and broken implementation and a shitty stdlib - might be better, even if it doesn't have some of the nicer frills of Nim.

I guess your definition of senior and mine vary. I'd consider senior members anyone willing to work on the compiler, as they are the members with the potential to move the language forward and out of the mess it currently finds itself in.

Are there experienced programmers in the Nim community, sure? Are they able to fix Nim with Nim's leadership in place? Doubtful in my mind based on history.

Also, I apologize if it seemed like I was evangelizing Nimskull or suggesting folks switch to it. I agree it is in no shape to serve a replacement for Nim presently, and may not ever be.

I apologize if my sentiment came off as Nimskull is a realistic alternative for those who are frustrated with Nim - it certainly is not, and I think your description of the state of the project is spot on PMunch!

I'd also like to see a section for junior devs, and what they need to bring to the table.

Another great section would be how to identify a pairing that is less than ideal / problematic.

Then - he randomly wants to chime in with tangentially related questions - it's basically all of the pitfalls described in the - working with a junior dev section of the OP's article - except I've tried every one of the tactics described therein, and at some point you have to question whether the junior dev really wants to be a dev or grow at all...

Another issue with pair programming - the assumption that the benefits which are potentially produced by pairing, are often baked into estimations regarding quality of work and / or deadlines.

The current product I work on has had a team of - count em - two developers for the past year. I'm the one that is full-stack, so I get to help the less-experienced developer work on our frontend, while I have minimal time to work on the backend solo (for the most part).

My pair programmer partner, also has no interest in learning the new dev-sec-ops our company is pushing - so I get to also solo all of that work.

It's an extremely frustrating / soul-crushing scenario to be in. It's basically punishment for exhibiting competence and willingness.

It's a situation I'm hopefully out of in the next month.

I find pairing with anyone that is significantly outside the range of your competency level, to be extremely frustrating.

You can have a junior dev, and hand hold, but it also requires effort on the part of the junior dev / a desire to learn and grow. Without that, the exercise is futile.

IMO - pair programming is over-hyped. I often find that I produce better, more reliable code, with the more space and more time I am given. I agree that pair-programming can rock in certain circumstances - but you need developers that have a certain level of synergy, you can't force it.

Thank you!

I really do value that feedback. I have also stopped using almost all forms of social media. I can't drop twitter - but that is because I value a lot of the content I read there (mostly related to game development).

I've also learned that I need to focus on what is important to my health, and less, on what is important to others.

These are hard lessons for some individuals to learn. It's amusing - because very much of my behavior is self-centered.

I think the key lesson I've learned throughout my continual growing process, is that thoughtless compassion and service to others, grants you the ability to also be compassionate towards yourself.

Living in your problems, hating life, focusing on negatives all the time, wraps your head around your own negativity and dissatisfaction with life.

It's a fine balance that needs to be maintained, and it's easy to slip up in that regard, but I think it's also critical in healing and recovery.

And even then - living this and thinking it, are two totally different things.