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nim-lang
Nim
Nim2013–2026
nim-lang / Nim

Nim

Nim is a statically typed compiled systems programming language. It combines successful concepts from mature languages like Python, Ada and Modula. Its design focuses on efficiency, expressiveness, and elegance (in that order of priority).

Languages & Compilers
Explore on GitHubRead Hacker News discussions
100Distinct people
162Mentions
2Explicit recommenders
18.3KGitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

Nim is a statically typed compiled systems programming language. It combines successful concepts from mature languages like Python, Ada and Modula. Its design focuses on efficiency, expressiveness, and elegance (in that order of priority).

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use was verified in the last source check.

What people are saying

I see Go and OCaml recommended to people fed up with Python's lack of static typing, and I just cringe. I love experimenting with programming languages, and Go seems to be…

Cyther606 used a recommendation phrase. 2 indexed comments match. This is a phrase match, not a verdict.

No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.

Also in these discussions

Mentioned in the same Hacker News threads. That is not proof they are substitutes.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 8–Nov 15 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/15/2026, 4:00:59 PM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by year162 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2013-08-26 07:15:53 UTC to 2026-08-14 22:20:35 UTC.

01020302013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments20132014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 16 mentions; 2 submissions, 14 comments2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 15 mentions; 1 submissions, 14 comments2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 11 mentions; 0 submissions, 11 comments2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 7 mentions; 0 submissions, 7 comments2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 9 mentions; 0 submissions, 9 comments2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 12 mentions; 0 submissions, 12 comments20192020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 21 mentions; 3 submissions, 18 comments2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 14 mentions; 0 submissions, 14 comments2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 26 mentions; 3 submissions, 23 comments2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 14 mentions; 3 submissions, 11 comments2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 6 mentions; 1 submissions, 5 comments2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 8 mentions; 0 submissions, 8 comments2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments. Incomplete calendar period.2026*

* An incomplete calendar period is marked with an outlined bar. Its count is not directly comparable with a full period.

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
20132013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202
20142014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC16214
20152015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC15114
20162016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC11011
20172017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC707
20182018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC909
20192019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC12012
20202020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC21318
20212021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC14014
20222022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC26323
20232023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC14311
20242024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC615
20252025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC808
2026 (partial)2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101

What Hacker News says

16 sources
Cyther606·Dec 30, 2014
Nim is like writing C at the speed of Python, and running Python at the speed of C. If you took Python but made it perform blazingly fast, and made it suitable for the most demanding of embedded and systems programming applications, in addition to game dev, you'd get Nim. If on the other hand you're satisfied with Python, then keep using it. It was trivial for me to port a Python elliptic curve implementation to Nim. I'd certainly recommend it over Cython, because Nim is simply designed as one complete system built for writing high performance applications with a sane syntax. Statistics (on an x86_64 Intel Core2Quad Q9300): Lang Time [ms] Memory [KB] Compile Time [ms] Compressed Code [B] Nim 1400 1460 893 486 C++ 1478 2717 774
Read the rest
728 D 1518 2388 1614 669 Rust 1623 2632 6735 934 Java 1874 24428 812 778 OCaml 2384 4496 125 782 Go 3116 1664 596 618 Haskell 3329 5268 3002 1091 LuaJit 3857 2368 - 519 Lisp 8219 15876 1043 1007 Racket 8503 130284 24793 741 https://github.com/def-/LPATHBench/blob/master/nim.nim https://github.com/Araq/Nim/wiki/Nim-for-C-programmers
In Nim Advocacy and Promotion Strategies
Cyther606·Dec 30, 2014
For a Python-like core language with an expressive type system that is simple, clean and immediately absorbable, you're really looking for Nim, not Go. The following produces a single binary with native code generation via compilation to C, no VM: import rdstdin, strutils let time24 = readLineFromStdin("Enter a 24-hour time: ").split(':').map(parseInt) hours24 = time24[0] minutes24 = time24[1] flights: array[8, tuple[since: int, depart: string, arrive: string]] = [(480, "8:00 a.m.", "10:16 a.m."), (583, "9:43 a.m.", "11:52 a.m."), (679, "11:19 a.m.", "1:31 p.m."), (767, "12:47 p.m.", "3:00 p.m."),
Read the rest
(840, "2:00 p.m.", "4:08 p.m."), (945, "3:45 p.m.", "5:55 p.m."), (1140, "7:00 p.m.", "9:20 p.m."), (1305, "9:45 p.m.", "11:58 p.m.")] proc minutesSinceMidnight(hours: int = hours24, minutes: int = minutes24): int = hours * 60 + minutes proc cmpFlights(m = minutesSinceMidnight()): seq[int] = result = newSeq[int](flights.len) for i in 0 .. <flights.len: result[i] = abs(m - flights[i].since) proc getClosest(): int = for k,v in cmpFlights(): if v == cmpFlights().min: return k echo "Closest departure time is ", flights[getClosest()].depart, ", arriving at ", flights[getClosest()].arrive Statistics (on an x86_64 Intel Core2Quad Q9300): Lang Time [ms] Memory [KB] Compile Time [ms] Compressed Code [B] Nim 1400 1460 893 486 C++ 1478 2717 774 728 D 1518 2388 1614 669 Rust 1623 2632 6735 934 Java 1874 24428 812 778 OCaml 2384 4496 125 782 Go 3116 1664 596 618 Haskell 3329 5268 3002 1091 LuaJit 3857 2368 - 519 Lisp 8219 15876 1043 1007 Racket 8503 130284 24793 741 Not only is this syntax far more approachable for anyone who likes Python, as opposed to Go, Nim is actually suitable for systems and embedded programming. Optional GC and manual memory management makes Nim one of the few up and coming systems programming language that ventures into C territory while still being safe and pragmatic enough for general usage. http://goran.krampe.se/2014/10/20/i-missed-nim/ https://github.com/Araq/Nim/wiki/Nim-for-C-programmers
In Everyday hassles in Go
Cyther606·Dec 24, 2014
> escapes my mind Love the post. Were you thinking of Nim [1]? It recently benchmarked close to C++ in speed [2] and it will assuredly continue gaining ground. import rdstdin, strutils let time24 = readLineFromStdin("Enter a 24-hour time: ").split(':').map(parseInt) hours24 = time24[0] minutes24 = time24[1] flights: array[8, tuple[since: int, depart: string, arrive: string]] = [(480, "8:00 a.m.", "10:16 a.m."), (583, "9:43 a.m.", "11:52 a.m."), (679, "11:19 a.m.", "1:31 p.m."), (767, "12:47 p.m.", "3:00 p.m."), (840, "2:00 p.m.", "4:08 p.m."),
Read the rest
(945, "3:45 p.m.", "5:55 p.m."), (1140, "7:00 p.m.", "9:20 p.m."), (1305, "9:45 p.m.", "11:58 p.m.")] proc minutesSinceMidnight(hours: int = hours24, minutes: int = minutes24): int = hours * 60 + minutes proc cmpFlights(m = minutesSinceMidnight()): seq[int] = result = newSeq[int](flights.len) for i in 0 .. <flights.len: result[i] = abs(m - flights[i].since) proc getClosest(): int = for k,v in cmpFlights(): if v == cmpFlights().min: return k echo "Closest departure time is ", flights[getClosest()].depart, ", arriving at ", flights[getClosest()].arrive [1] https://github.com/Araq/Nimrod/wiki/Nimrod-for-C-programmers [2]: https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/2pvf68/armv7_v...
In Computer Language Benchmarks Game – Rust vs. Go
Cyther606·Dec 22, 2014
Sums up the appeal of Nim [1], which recently benchmarked favorably to C++ [2]. import rdstdin, strutils let time24 = readLineFromStdin("Enter a 24-hour time: ").split(':').map(parseInt) hours24 = time24[0] minutes24 = time24[1] flights: array[8, tuple[since: int, depart: string, arrive: string]] = [(480, "8:00 a.m.", "10:16 a.m."), (583, "9:43 a.m.", "11:52 a.m."), (679, "11:19 a.m.", "1:31 p.m."), (767, "12:47 p.m.", "3:00 p.m."), (840, "2:00 p.m.", "4:08 p.m."), (945, "3:45 p.m.", "5:55 p.m."),
Read the rest
(1140, "7:00 p.m.", "9:20 p.m."), (1305, "9:45 p.m.", "11:58 p.m.")] proc minutesSinceMidnight(hours: int = hours24, minutes: int = minutes24): int = hours * 60 + minutes proc cmpFlights(m = minutesSinceMidnight()): seq[int] = result = newSeq[int](flights.len) for i in 0 .. <flights.len: result[i] = abs(m - flights[i].since) proc getClosest(): int = for k,v in cmpFlights(): if v == cmpFlights().min: return k echo "Closest departure time is ", flights[getClosest()].depart, ", arriving at ", flights[getClosest()].arrive [1] https://github.com/Araq/Nimrod/wiki/Nimrod-for-C-programmers [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/2pvf68/armv7_v...
In Rust, an Anti-Sloppy Programming Language
Cyther606·Nov 19, 2014
Check out Nim. import rdstdin, strutils let time24 = readLineFromStdin("Enter a 24-hour time: ").split(':').map(parseInt) hours24 = time24[0] minutes24 = time24[1] flights: array[8, tuple[since: int, depart: string, arrive: string]] = [(480, "8:00 a.m.", "10:16 a.m."), (583, "9:43 a.m.", "11:52 a.m."), (679, "11:19 a.m.", "1:31 p.m."), (767, "12:47 p.m.", "3:00 p.m."), (840, "2:00 p.m.", "4:08 p.m."), (945, "3:45 p.m.", "5:55 p.m."), (1140, "7:00 p.
Read the rest
m.", "9:20 p.m."), (1305, "9:45 p.m.", "11:58 p.m.")] proc minutesSinceMidnight(hours: int = hours24, minutes: int = minutes24): int = hours * 60 + minutes proc cmpFlights(m = minutesSinceMidnight()): seq[int] = result = newSeq[int](flights.len) for i in 0 .. <flights.len: result[i] = abs(m - flights[i].since) proc getClosest(): int = for k,v in cmpFlights(): if v == cmpFlights().min: return k echo "Closest departure time is ", flights[getClosest()].depart, ", arriving at ", flights[getClosest()].arrive https://github.com/Araq/Nimrod/wiki/Nimrod-for-C-programmers
In Why Python Is Slow: Looking Under the Hood
dmarble·Jun 29, 2014
If you haven't taken a look at Nimrod, it might give you some ideas, or perhaps inspire you to be a code contributor! As a python guy, I'm really liking it for some hobby work I'm doing. The compiler and standard library are MIT licensed. http://nimrod-lang.org/ https://github.com/Araq/Nimrod Also, there's a recent forum posting about the decision not to do LLVM codgen for now: http://forum.nimrod-lang.org/t/480. Perhaps you can ask some questions of the main contributors; they're quite responsive.
In Ask HN: What projects are you working on?
dom96·Mar 7, 2014
Nimrod - http://nimrod-lang.org - http://github.com/Araq/Nimrod Nimrod is a "new" systems programming language which is statically typed, uses space delimited blocks (like Python) and compiles to C to create very fast and dependency free executables. We have a growing community with a couple of collaborators already who love to help newcomers. There is plenty to do, the most important of which is fixing compiler bugs but I'm certain that most people would not like to start with that. There are of course many other ways you can contribute. You may wish to write libraries in Nimrod and make them available for other Nimrod programmers, you can improve the standard library documentation and the tutorials, or you can simply write software in Nimrod and give us feedback about the language and the compiler. If you're interested then talk to us o
Read the rest
n IRC (#nimrod on Freenode) or our forum (http://forum.nimrod-lang.org).
In Ask HN: Looking for contributors?

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