As usual, I'm anxiously waiting for the new Nim to come out, and the question popped up while I was looking at the github page.
Currently, we see Nim is a compiled, garbage-collected systems programming language ... but if all goes as planned, that will change. Is there a catchy way to describe the new approach? Nim is a compiled systems programming language with ownership semantics for references?
I'm not sure if either of those are compelling; for me it's the metaprogramming that's Nim's standout feature but I do think a good tag line is helpful. GC is/was a good thing to talk about, even if it's a line in the sand for many programmers.
GC will still be there.
I think most of us know that well. And it all depends of course on the success of the owned refs -- the Gel2 paper is old and seems to had not too much influence on programming languages, so we may have good reasons to be a bit sceptical.
But I think his question was more about the wording. I was never too happy with the term "garbage collected language" written in bold on the homepage, as it reminds people too much to languages like Java not well suited for systems programming. I suggested "optional garbage collector support" some years ago. And other terms from the homepage: "elegant package" Do we want a good language or a niche package? "Compiles to C, C++ or JavaScript" that may let people think it is a plain transpiled one, as recently someone in the forum wrote. Maybe it would be a good idea to hire a native speaker to update some of the wordings. I recently visit Julias page, that one is really well done.
Explaining whole Nim on few words is not easy
Yes -- but some of us may remember still the old nim homepage, which contained more serious info about nim on the first page. Current page looks really nice, when printed on a promotional poster. And maybe on a tiny cell phone display.
When you compare that to Julia: Julia in a nutshell is really good starting point, with a few small sections explaining the core concepts. And after that the Ecosystem header with some important application areas. (I don't think that the animated pictures are a real benefit, static ones would be fine.)
I don't think that homepage layout is too important and of course devs should waste absolutely no time on that, but layout and textual content should be of course not too stupid. And maybe while Nim has currently some commercial support, one may consider hiring someone.
PS: And I consider my critics from last year about blog posts still valid: Repeating the full verbose text "The Nim team is happy to announce that the latest release of Nim, version 0.xx.x, is now available. Nim is a systems programming language that focuses on performance, portability and expressiveness." looks not professional. Dom explained that by the fact that he uses the same text for reddit posts. That makes some sense, but it is boring to read it again and again for Nim users looking at the new release text.