Potential users
Hi all, I want to philosofize a bit about Nim and its potential users, use-cases, and user-growth. First of all I want to distinguish some groups important to Nim. I see 5 (+1) major groups being: Nim's core-developpers, lib-developpers (=semi-users; hybrids of developpers and users), end-users (which are application-programmers or device-system-service programmers), maintainers and promotors (=5). Of course many people have multiple roles.
As a separate group I mention the (+1 group): consumers of Nim-programs. When there are many consumers of a Nim-program it creates confidence/status for the underlying programming-language, and is thereby inviting more users.
Concerning consumers again I distinguish pff between end-consumers and company-consumers. In case of a popular end-consumer-Nim-app its positive influence is clear. In case of an invisible device-system-service it is not so clear to the consumer, but it is to the company who creates the device and thereby becomes also a bit of consumer of the Nim-program. And finally there are tooling-apps for companies. Still folowin?
To accomodate growth one has to service all these groups. Of course in earlier phases -besides the core-devs- the lib-devs are very important. Without libs, it is harder or even impossible to create specialized apps. The current major challenge in lib-land are the GUI-libs. The GUI-libs are important for some end-users and consumers because they have all these nice colors and cool widgets, and sometimes even sounds that are attractive. The more you get to the end-consumer-side the more flashy and fun it has to be. Or would fun-ctional would be better?
I thought I would shed some light on user-growth but it is all more complicated than I anticipated. But that's true of most things isnt it?
The current major challenge in lib-land are the GUI-libs.
The challenge is to make App Development in Nim in some way significantly better than with existing languages and tools. Right now, there's no such benefits, and so not many people willing to discard already working tools to try new Nim tool.
@Termer: I have not yet seen a rule that some discussions must be done on IRC/Discord. But maybe that is a silent rule or practice. Maybe i have been living under a stone for that matter. ;-)
@alexeypetrushin: It is a crowded market, but markets are also dynamic (a little to much in my view; they should be much more designed), so there are allways new niches and new wants in the market. I think universities are fore-runners in some domains; they have the time and money to invest in new techs, whereas businesses only adopt techs if they are allready well-matured and low-risk. (at least the smaller businesses). I think python has had a lot of usage in univerities aswell. Also, some companies are weary of open-source stuff because they see it as threat to their monetization-models. So maybe universities can be important (initial) users / consumers of Nim. As we heared from Arik aswell.
@Hobbyman
I have not yet seen a rule that some discussions must be done on IRC/Discord
No rule, just convention. I like to have more contentious conversations there because it's less visible, and I don't want to have drama or repeated conversations with negative connotations being archived very visibly on the forum.
@Hobbyman
To me the biggest problem with Nim is the brand. In a world with thousands of competitive languages (all with their strengths and weaknesses) you need to pick one but you have never heard about a story of Nim and Nim isn't even mentioned in the Tiobe index. Do you want to invest time in that language, other than use it as a hobby?
This is the problem. You know, there are three ways to make money:
Nim is obviously in the second position.