I don't really believe this thread will serve much of a purpose other than maybe to ruffle some feathers, but it's Friday, and I necroed a 2-day old post on HN to elaborate on this subject, so I figured I'd share it here as well.
My comment appears at the bottom of the thread I believe but has sparked some discussion since yesterday. If you search for - "I started programming in Nim around 2015 ", you should find it...
There are only a couple, maybe a few members of the community who I wish would leave or be removed from their posts - so please don't take my comments as me expressing hatred towards Nim or Araq. I don't agree with Araq on every decision they make, but I have a lot of respect for Araq and what he's built with the help and support of the community as well as the changes I've seen in how he interacts with members of the community (for the better mostly). There are bad-faith actors though in Nim's leadership IMO, at least ones who don't have Nim's best interests at heart, and until they are removed from any decision-making role my outlook for Nim's future is grim.
Here's a link to the comment itself: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=carterza
And here's a link to the thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31271580#31284256
Hello world. This threads raises very important questions. That must be answered.
I think that you shouldn't abandon the community. We are here for Nim. Not for the people around it. You can't imagine how much I love Nim and its community. Nim changed my life. As a programmer coming from a web background, it was very hard for me the find a way in systems programming. When I discovered Nim, it changed everything for me. At last, I was able to create relatively easily, system softwares. The fact that our community is small, make we feel close to each other. And I've always got answers to my questions, even when they were a bit stupid.
I know that my personal path is not a reason to accept to reject a community. But what I'm trying to say is that, despite our shortcomings, we are a nice and welcoming community, Building the best programming language ever, and being part of that is a priceless privilege.
Those in charge of managing the community are more interested in their personal reputation's and resumes than they are actually contributing working software to the language's ecosystem. Even the BDFL treats Nim like their own personal compiler R&D playground.
Can you provide proofs of that ? How can you be sure that you are not misinterpreting their intentions ? When somebody has worked hard on a project for years, its understandable that they treats it like their baby. It doesn't mean that they don't have a good mentality concerning the community.
There are so many broken features in Nim which never see the light of day or never get removed.
The solution is to help improving the software, not to leave...
the Nim compiler has become insanely difficult to work on
You are certainly the only person to think that here
the lack of interest in improving the situation from those leading the community
The leaders are few. They want to improve everything but need time, and support.
The development path is driven by leadership and not the community, and leadership has no plan
You chose the wrong time to say that. Since a couple days, dom96 is has launched a thread to ask everybody for new ideas. The leaders have always left the community express their ideas, and take them in account. You said it yourself:
when Araq and others were asked for a roadmap for Nim and they admitted to not having one
They let the community decide of what Nim is becoming.
Why are you replying to each of my points in individual replies? This is annoying af...
You joined the forum in Aug 2020. I believe I have a much broader and deeper wealth of experience when it comes to interacting with the community and its leadership. I don't care if dom96 solicited ideas from the community. He's done it countless times before and nothing changes. Keep slurping up the Kool-Aid if you want.
Things have gotten so bad, that a hard fork has been in development since last year
What a bad decision ! We love Nim and its syntax. Don't you think that Dividing our community will reduce Nim's influence and prevent others to adopt it ? How can we pretend to build something great, genuine and innovative, if we can't even solve our personal conflicts by communication ?
there are only a handful of folks remaining that have been around for more than a year or two
Nobody believes that, not even you.
Woot?? First of all, I suspect you meant Göran Krampe (not Gordon) and secondly... how did I end up on a list of people you think left Nim due to some issue with leadership?! You need to be a bit more careful about such things.
Regards Göran
I am still here. Recently, I was rewriting AlphaGeometry in Nim and got stuck in a compiler bug. I will come back to it later.
I also have written some command line tools using Nim recently, and am happy with it.
I (Libman) am also still alive.
Sorry for the ban evasion; but, since I was mentioned above...
I just wanted to take responsibility for my unprofessional behavior.
I did not "leave the community due to frustration with leadership".
I was frustrated with the open source scene in general, and decided to not be a part of it.
Can't blame people for criticizing my copyfree license nagging, and can't blame and Araq for banning me.
I honestly did believe that all libraries keeping to copyfree licenses (no copyleft) would have given Nim a niche advantage over other languages.
I have utmost respect for Araq and all other top Nim contributors (including those who are very wrong about politics, and have a glaring double standard in pushing their politics while silencing others).
We are all human. We all disagree. It shouldn't get in the way of free software collaboration.
Russia and the West are still collaborating on space projects, despite the war. FLOSS should be the same way.
CAN'T WE ALL JUST GET ALONG...