rust VS Nim

TensorFlow has language support for TypeScript well as Rust.

Thank you for the restponse! With tensorflow I am probably better of with something like; [tensorflow rust bindings](https://github.com/tensorflow/rust/tree/master/src). But I believe some useful extensions are still written in python for example; [TFDV](https://github.com/tensorflow/data-validation).. and how about scikit-learn or even something that is simpler like fb-prophet that is entirely written in python?

Tensorflow bindings exist, technically, but they're in a pretty rough state AFAIK.

tensorflow/rust (Rust): Rust language bindings for TensorFlow

You might also want to look at Nim, Zig, and of course Rust, which I'm sure you've heard of or looked at by now.

> isn't cpan pretty much the grandfather of "oh there's a library for that"?

The TeX CTAN in 1992 [1] was clearly the inspiration for CPAN a year or three later [2] (in both name & thing). So, maybe CTAN is the great grandfather? :-) { My intent is only to inform, not be disputatious. I know you said "pretty much". }

To be fair, C has an ecosystem. OS package managers/installers are a thing. There is surely a list of much >1 "core libs/programs" (terminfo/curses/some text editor/compilers/etc.) that would be in most "bare bones" OS installs upon which you could develop. One certainly depends upon OS kernels and device drivers. IMO, at least one mistake "language" package managers make is poor integration with OS package managers. Anyway you cut it, it is hard to write a program without depending upon a lot of code. Yes, some of that is more audited.

As the "lump" gets giant, dark corners also proliferate. There was a recent article [3] and HN discussion [4] about trying to have the "optimal chunkiness/granularity" in various ecosystems. I agree that it is doubtful we will solve any of that in an HN sub-to-the-Nth thread. I think that article/discussion only scratched the surface. I will close by saying I think it's relatively uncontentious (but maybe not unanimous) that packaging has gone awry when a simple program requires a transitive closure of many hundreds of packages. FWIW, I also often write my own stuff rather than relying on 3rd parties and have done so in many languages. Nim [5] is a nice one for it. It's not perfect - what is - but it sucks the least in my experience.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CTAN

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CPAN

[3] https://raku-advent.blog/2021/12/06/unix_philosophy_without_...

[4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29520182

[5] https://nim-lang.org/

> I think the message is more nuanced

I thought it was more nuanced too as they were explaining how integer types can be derived, until I finished the article, and they really did just seem to be complaining that there's a mismatch between compile time and run time.

Dynamic types don't really solve the problems they mention as far as I can tell either (perhaps I am misunderstanding), they just don't provide any guarantees at all and so "work" in the loosest sense.

> otherwise wouldn't lisp with its homoiconicity and compile time macros fit the bill perfectly?

That's a good point, I do wonder why they didn't mention Lisp at all.

> we don't have a solution yet

What they want to do can, as far as I can see, be implemented in Nim easily in a standard, imperative form, without any declarative shenanigans. Indeed, it is implemented here: https://github.com/nim-lang/Nim/blob/ce44cf03cc4a78741c423b2...

Of course, that implementation is more complex than the one in the article because it handles a lot more.

At the end of the day, it's really a capability mismatch at the language level and the author even states this:

> Programming languages ought to be rethought.

I'd argue that Nim has been 'rethought' specifically to address the issues they mention. The language was built with extension in mind, and whilst the author states that macros are a bad thing, I get the impression this is because most languages implement them as tacked on substitution mechanisms (Rust/D), and/or are declarative rather than "simple" imperative processes. IMHO, most people want to write general code for compile time work (like Zig), not learn a new sub-language. The author states this as well.

Nim has a VM for running the language at compile time so you can do whatever you want, including the recursive type decomposition (for example: https://github.com/status-im/nim-stint). It also has 'real' macros that aren't substitutions but work on the core AST directly, can inspect types at compile time, and is a system language but also high level. It seems to solve their problems, but of course, they simply might not have used or even heard of it.

> not slowing one's work

Put back into context, your reply makes sense as these popular libraries are pretty battle tested. Having said that, it is a valid point that type hints being voluntary means they can only be relied upon with discipled developers and for code you control. Of course, the same point could be made for any code you can't control, especially if the library is written in a weakly typed language like C (or JS).

> I just don't see its absence as the crippling dealbreaker

My genuine question would be: what does dynamic typing offer over static typing? Verbosity would be my expectation, but that only really seems to apply without type inference. The other advantage often mentioned is that it's faster to iterate. Both of these don't seem particularly compelling to me, but I'm probably biased as I've spent all of my career working with static typing, aside from a few projects with Python and JS.

> if there are languages besides JS that you feel get their type system "just right", I'd be curious as to what they are

This is use case dependent, of course. Personally I get on well with Nim's (https://nim-lang.org/) type system: https://nim-lang.org/docs/manual.html#types. It's certainly not perfect, but it lets me write code that evokes a similar 'pseudocode' feel as Python and gets out of my way, whilst being compile time bound and very strict (the C-like run time performance doesn't hurt, too). It can be written much as you'd write type hinted Python, but it's strictness is sensible.

For example, you can write `var a = 1.5; a += 1` because `1` can be implicitly converted to a float here, but `var a = 1; a += 1.5` will not compile because int and float aren't directly compatible - you'd need to type cast: `a += int(1.5)` which makes it obvious something weird is happening.

Similarly `let a = 1; let b: uint = a` will not compile because `int` and `uint` aren't compatible (you'd need to use `uint(a)`). You can however write `let b: uint = 1` as the type can be implicitly converted. You can see/play with this online here: https://play.nim-lang.org/#ix=3MRD

This kind of strict typing can save a lot of head scratching issues if you're doing low level work, but it also just validates what you're doing is sensible without the cognitive overhead or syntactic noise that comes from something like Rust (Nim uses implicit lifetimes for performance and threading, rather than as a constraint).

Compared to Python, Nim won't let you silently overwrite things by redefining them, and raises a compile time error if two functions with the same name ambiguously use the same types. However, it has function overloading based on types, which helps in writing statically checked APIs that are type driven rather than name driven.

One of my favourite features is distinct types, which allow you to model different things that are all the same underlying type:

    type

Nim is another candidate in the Zig-like space of exposing the AST to the macro system, and also has (albeit experimental) concepts. Perhaps more interesting is coalton, which is a functional type system on top of Common Lisp - the most dynamic language out there. Curious if you have any thoughts on those!

Nim is probably the closest I've seen, but I'm still waiting for what you're describing.

There are languages that work as source-to-source compilers like Haxe, Zig, Nim, but no emphasis on IR which you can compose with your own transformations.