Hello, I am evaluating different language options and Nim has a lot going for it, but I worry about its long term viability.
Challenges(afaics):
Are there plans or information regarding these?
Biggest company is Status and they produce excellent libraries that are very much production ready.
I agree with you problem with Nim is that it does not really shine at anything specifically. It's a research project with many different takes on how to do things.
Also out of the box experience is not great. Most people do web services,crud,json and they need debguabbility.
All of these are janky in Nim. There's no "best way" which everybody uses. Go has robust stdlib and backing of Google.
what is the niche where Nim tries to be the best tool for the job and where the main focus lies (I hate jack of all trades tools, they don’t work well)
So use something else, Nim's credo is "you only need one programming language".
What niche are you looking for? You could use Nim to write a DSL for it.
Then again, many niche languages can do "everything" but are hampered outside of their niche.
What is a "bus factor"?
There is no real longterm business plan, but the language is more or less feature complete. There are features being added to the compiler to improve speed and there are also tooling improvements in the works, but the language feature set is probably sufficient for your needs already.
There's no official niche, but embedded is the practical niche that it has found, and there are a few companies using it for that purpose.
If you want a frictionless business language, look elsewhere. There are easier options for building common business applications like webapps.
Bevy is a focused project filling a specific need. Nim on the other hand very proudly doesn't target anything, so of course you're not going to see this without a niche or a roadmap. Like I said earlier, if you want a business lang filling a niche with a plan, look elsewhere.
Regarding funding, Nim actually does have it and hires at least one full-time employee (that's @ringabout last I talked to him, which was last year). Everything still goes through @Araq as far as I know, though.
There are some people over at Nim Works creating a language forked from Nim called Nimskull due to frustrations with management and language direction (or lack thereof), but that's not trying to be Nim, its intended purpose is to evolve in its own direction, so I wouldn't follow that unless you already are invested in it.
If you want something corporate supported and with a roadmap with the added bonus of popularity, go with Rust instead.
OK, thank you. I wasn't aware of Nim Works and Nimskull.
I still think the evolution I see in Bevy and other projects is much healthier and has a longer viability. Just look at rocket.rs, how much traction and mind share they lost, just because the lead developer dropped off the planet for years. They learned their lesson, but it might be too little too late.