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2541 :: What does "direct hardware access" in Nim mean?

• Atlas (orginal) [2016-09-16T10:05:41+02:00] view original

  I've been a Python programmer, far away from low-level stuffs.

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• Krux02 (orginal) [2016-09-16T12:12:26+02:00] view original

  It means that when hardware has mapped itself to some data in memory, nim can just read it and use it. I don't know how such things work in Python, but in java it is always a big hassle, because java always needs these buffer objects that on one hand give what you want to do with pointers, but with a lot of overhead. Also calling into C from Java is always a pain, because you can't just call into C functions. This is supposed to be a much smoother experience in Nim.

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• jlp765 (orginal) [2016-09-17T08:59:35+02:00] view original

  Nim also allows Assembler statements and expressions

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• jangko (orginal) [2016-09-17T11:41:54+02:00] view original

  • I don't think modern OSes will allow any user space application to access any hardware directly. Any hardware access must be performed through system calls(low level e.g. asm), which often encapsulated into function calls(higher level).
  • But beside normal user space application, Nim can produce kernel space program or device driver that can access hardware directly.
  • Nim also can produce a program that will be put in an embedded system. In such environment, usually there is no OS or only primitive OS, and Nim produced program have higher chances to access hardware directly.

  I think point number one and three can be applied to Python as long as that system have a python interpreter.

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• _tulayang (orginal) [2016-09-19T04:36:24+02:00] view original

  In my opinion, "direct hardware access in Nim" means File System API, Socket API written by C. There are equivalent wrappers in Python (written by C and wrappered by Python).

  If you want to write some "direct hardware access" low-level API, you should comply with the specification of these C API.

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