Nim: A Programming Language Underdog

don't force people to use spaces. Your stylistic choices are just stylistic choices.

If someone can get past this as an "issue", they might discover the beauty of this language.

I only found this issue because I was looking into Nim. It seemed great, but this one thing completely turned me off from it, and here's why:

I'm not going to use a language where it seems the developers are going to be antagonistic to people who think slightly differently. It just feels like you're doing it wrong, here, we'll show you the right way.

I'm not going to use software that thinks its users are dumb and need to be babysat, pushed towards the correct choices and restricted of all other options. And honestly, that philosophy can fuck right off.

I've never had anything but trouble with spaces. I find that usually they're used sloppily, leading to mixed-width indentation. I've modified files that had 2, 3, 4, and 5 space indentation all at once. If a standard isn't strictly enforced within a project, you could find that different files have different indentation widths, depending on the default settings of the IDE of the person who created the file.

I generally prefer tabs for this reason. No matter what editor you're using, you can set your preferred width and not worry about a thing; you don't deal with the differing widths issue; and it's usually pretty clear when your indentation is off. Spaces are reserved for alignment of items.

Although, I would never force someone else to use my preferred standard unless it was already established as the standard for a given project. Consistency trumps personal preference every single time. When you're working on an existing project, you configure your editor to conform to the project's standards, period. Your merge request isn't being accepted otherwise.

So personally, I would consider Nim to be far too authoritarian for my tastes. Forcing you to use certain constructs is one thing, but forcing you to conform to a specific style based purely on the language maintainers' personal preference leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

With that being said, I do see some value in enforcing consistency at the language level, e.g. in the way Python enforces one type of indentation (but doesn't make any particular one a failing error!). I don't mind built-in linting as long as you can select the standard that you want, rather than being forced to follow someone else's.

If I be totally honest, that Nim example seems quite disagreeable to me, and yet I do like how Haskell and other ML programs are laid out. Maybe that's because I'm unfamiliar with the language. I brought up Python because it's the other indentation-based language I'm actually familiar with. For me, I really dislike that the following is a syntax error:

if True:
    print 'true'
   print 'indeed'

because I generally work in the REPL and that sort of code easily happens when editing a definition here and there. Having to fix formatting before checking if the code is valid interferes with my concentration (I don't think I have ADHD, but I'm very bad at concentrating). And that's a REPL situation, I'd really dislike it in a edit-compile type of experience (which seemingly what Nim has).

But when it comes to building something concrete, all of this becomes taste and detail. If I had to do something with C, Nim seems like a strong candidate to use instead of using C directly. I guess it competes with languages like D, but has a different approach to interop with C. It's a bit similar to Vala which compiles to C with GObject. I'm not sure if such appoach is a good one, but I lack the expertise to tell if it is or not.

Edit: wait, I actually like how code is laid out in that program of yours you linked. I does look quite a bit like OCaml to me, without the awkard ;;.

Just accept TABS are illegal characters in Nim and don't use them, or configure your editor to replace them, and move along.

It look's to me like people are going "I don't quite like this," and moving on from the thought of trying it out. You're obviously investing in it, so why? Not "[list of features]," what do you like about it? Why do you want people to try it out and possibly start using it more often? What benefit does it bring?

Perhaps another angle, here's a language that doesn't compile when indented with spaces (I neither know of one, or how it would be possible to implement, it's just a hypothetical). Opinions? Thoughts? Would you try it out?