[Cyther606]

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 picking up momentum but unfortunately for both Go and OCaml, they have this ridiculously restrictive syntax to them respectively which it makes it deeply unattractive for prototyping anything.

If you're looking for a statically typed Python that can be grokked in a matter of minutes, and compiles down to a static binary like Go does, and runs as fast as C in benchmarks, you should definitely check out the Nim compiler [1].

Code example:

    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.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

This language deserves your attention.

[1]: http://goran.krampe.se/2014/10/20/i-missed-nim/

[2]: https://github.com/Araq/Nim/wiki/Nim-for-C-programmers

[lmm]

Nim is nowhere near the maturity of OCaml, and everything I've seen about it has the whiff of zealotry. I'll wait until I see more nuanced talks about it, and an established ecosystem that doesn't rely on C libraries.

[viraptor]

> ecosystem that doesn't rely on C libraries

If something is compiled to native code, what's the point of writing a library that's not just a binding? In python it makes sense, because you get the pure-python installation of your app - it doesn't depend on the OS, python versions, etc.

But once you're going to compile your app for a target platform... what's the point of not relying on C libraries?