c2nim VS nimpy

Also on the game development front, I maintain a raylib wrapper https://github.com/planetis-m/naylib As long utilities like c2nim https://github.com/nim-lang/c2nim exist, it's trivial to create bindings of C/C++ libraries. One thing I want to experiment more is making it more automatic by writing a callback exposed by c2nim that transform the generated code using Nim's AST. But regardless in that project I was able to write safe language abstractions on top of the bindings that provide a more native experience. It has scope-based memory management, generics and ... function overloading.

Rust also has a library called safer_ffi that makes FFI easier, and I tried to use that, but the library seems to be immature, and I could not get arguments in Rust functions. If this library can be used properly, it will be possible to output C header files from Rust functions and automatically generate Nim interface functions from C header files using c2nim. We look forward to further development of this feature.

Well I'm 99.5% certain at least. Even now I'm uncertain of the C syntax. And I've not been bold enough to test 3rd order C function pointers. I figure that's probably C code you don't wanna touch if possible.

https://github.com/nim-lang/c2nim/blob/11f2c5363dfe7e8c7c8ce...

The other annoying one is that "signed" and "unsigned" are basically adjectives, but "long" can be both a type and a modifier. So it's difficult to parse unless you're the target C compiler. Technically you can, but you have to use backtracking.

c2nim is a tool to translate ANSI C code to Nim. The output is human-readable Nim code that is meant to be tweaked by hand after the translation process. If you are tired of wrapping C library, you can try futhark which supports "simply import C header files directly into Nim". Similar to futhark, cinterop allows one to interop with C/C++ code without having to create wrappers. nimLUA is a glue code generator to bind Nim and Lua together using Nim's powerful macro. nimpy and nimporter is a bridge between Nim and Python. rnim is a bridge between R and Nim. nimjl is a bridge between Nim and Julia! Last but not least, genny generates a shared library and bindings for many languages such as Python, Node.js, C.

Now if only a full binding generator for C and C++ headers to Nim was done, the language would really be cooking!

"What do you mean, Nim has two of these already?"

Yeah, I know, and -- not to hurt anyone's feelings -- but: they kind of suck. And there's no way I see them able to be extended to do the job fully, based on the way they're currently built.

Those are some bold claims to make!

So before I get stoned to death (no offense to the authors, I am grateful that they exist and have used them both) let me attempt an explanation and back up these statements.

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To start off, the two tools available are "c2nim" and "nimterop". c2nim is a Nim official library, while nimterop is a community library.

  https://github.com/nim-lang/c2nim

Yes. Nim compiles to C and has a lot of features for interacting with C code. You can easily call C routines from Nim and Nim functions from C. There's a bit of a ceremony you need to go through, but most of it can be automated with c2nim tool: https://github.com/nim-lang/c2nim

I mean honestly, the closest language to Mojo really is Nim. In the latest Lex Fridman interview [0] when he talks about his ideas behind Mojo it pretty much sounds like he's describing Nim. Ok fair, he wants Mojo to be a full superset of Python, but honestly with nimpy [1] our Python interop is about as seamless as it can really be (without being a superset, which Mojo clearly is not yet). Even the syntax of Mojo looks a damn lot like Nim imo. Anyway, I guess he has the ability to raise enough funds to hire enough people to write his own language within ~2 years so as not have to follow random peoples whim about where to take the language. So I guess I can't blame him. But as someone who's pretty invested in the Nim community it's quite a shame to see such a hyped language receive so much attention by people who should really check out Nim. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[0]: https://youtu.be/pdJQ8iVTwj8?si=LfPSNDq8UKKIsJd3

[1]: https://github.com/yglukhov/nimpy

You can also do this in Nim, which basically means you can write any program you could in Python with libraries in Nim. https://github.com/yglukhov/nimpy

Ones that have not been mentioned so far:

nlvm is an unofficial LLVM backend: https://github.com/arnetheduck/nlvm

npeg lets you write PEGs inline in almost normal PEG notation: https://github.com/zevv/npeg

futhark provides for much more automatic C interop: https://github.com/PMunch/futhark

nimpy allows calling Python code from Nim and vice versa: https://github.com/yglukhov/nimpy

questionable provides a lot of syntax sugar surrounding Option/Result types: https://github.com/codex-storage/questionable

ratel is a framework for embedded programming: https://github.com/PMunch/ratel

cps allows arbitrary procedure rewriting to continuation passing style: https://github.com/nim-works/cps

chronos is an alternative async/await backend: https://github.com/status-im/nim-chronos

zero-functional fixes some inefficiencies when chaining list operations: https://github.com/zero-functional/zero-functional

owlkettle is a declarative macro-oriented library for GTK: https://github.com/can-lehmann/owlkettle

A longer list can be found at https://github.com/ringabout/awesome-nim.

I use Python daily for its massive momentum for scientific stuff, but I also use Nim for everything else. Nim compiles to C, and making Python native modules with Nim is easy with Nimpy.

If are a data scientist and come from python take a look at nimpy, a great way to just import python libraries and use them! https://github.com/yglukhov/nimpy Numpy, pandas, pytorch all usable in Nim.

Nim is the ultimate glue language, use libraries from anything: python, c, js, objc.

I've come to really enjoy programming in Nim. Note that Nim is very different language despite sharing a similar syntax. However, I feel it keeps a lot of the "feel" of Python 2 days of being a fairly simple neat language but that lets you do things at compile time (like compile time duck typing).

There's a good Python -> Nim bridge: https://github.com/yglukhov/nimpy

See this nimpy issue about it: https://github.com/yglukhov/nimpy/issues/43

It has pretty good integration with python, either for having your main code in python and writing small hot functions as nim and importing via nimporter or using python libraries in nim via nimpy.

Related: Nimpy[0] provides an easy way to write Python extensions in Nim, which manages the ABI side very well.

Python 2 is now gone, but until it was, Nimpy was an easy way to write Python extension modules that only needed to be compiled once, and would work with any of your installed Python 2 and Python 3. Magic.

[0] https://github.com/yglukhov/nimpy