How much work would it take to make it work on past PCs or workstations?
For example have the C specs changed and does the C output need to be changed? Does the STD lib need to be changed or implemented for old hardware?
What about compilation speed?
What about ORC/ARC? I know that Nim is pretty fast. Would it still be close to C perf on the old hardware like it is currently?
What about optimizations? Are any of the optimizations in Nim exclusive of C compiler optimizations reliant on new hardware features? I would assume old C compilers are not well optimized. Would Nim's optimized C code offer any advantages?
What about binary size? Are Nim's binaries small enough?
Would it be a panacea for hobby programmers?
What about for game develeopment. Would it be too slow for old hardware game dev?
What about Nim's safety features? What implications would a safe language like Nim(unlike C which was common at that time) bring to the table. Especially after the invention of the internet?
What would be the boarder implications of Nim being introduced in the 20th century?
This is a very interesting question to me and I hope it isn't deleted by mods. At least it's a good thought experiment. This post was inspired by all the time-travel business management novels that Chinese and Korean authors write where the MC time travels/transmigrates/regresses to the past and 'invents' future tech and become the richest man in the world. There are like thousands of novels like these in Chinese and Korean.
Research C's history on "function prototypes" and "_Atomic" and see for yourself if a code generator works better when it can take advantage of these.
The answer to most of your questions is simply: Yes. See for example https://forum.nim-lang.org/t/10933
Yes, really, Nim can do embedded development even though it uses such novel and dangerous ideas like automatic storage management and exception handling.
What would be the boarder implications of Nim being introduced in the 20th century?
C programmers would have another language to pretend doesn’t exist so they could spread the myth that C is the one and only fast language.