Learning Nim

I have been using nim-lang or nim off and on for about 6 mo. I really like the language and its fun to program in , but I have no patience to actually learn nim the correct way. I mean instead of just throwing shit together and thinking (I am cool). So I bought the books Nim In Action and Mastering Nim and I am going to go through both the books to understand better about programming.

For those whom have never heard of the Nim language take a look and see for yourself. Its very easy to get started and learn.

Nim In Action:

• Book details and how to buy can be found here: Nim in action

Starting Mastering Nim:

• Book details can be found here: Master Nim - from Nim Blog
• Can be bought on Amazon here: Mastering nim

Example's will be from both books

"Nim is a general purpose language , it is a system's programming language, meaning Nim can be used from web app development to writing kernels. Nim can used to write low level drivers or compile on embedded SoC (System on chip). "

Nim is a compile language and it gets "translated" to C source code. Nim can compile to Javascript, ObjC, C++, and and even WASM.

A good example of the capabilities of Nim for systems programming is the toy example NimKernel

Nim features include:

• Type system

• Metaprogramming

• Style insensitivity: Nim uses snake_case or camelCase for style even builtin functions are style insensitive.

Example of using to_upper or toUpper

import strutils # nim library for string utilities
echo "Hello, ".to_upper()"
echo "World, .toUpper()"

👑 INim 0.6.1
Nim Compiler Version 1.6.8 [Linux: amd64] at /home/nixfreak/.nimble/bin/nim
nim> import strutils
nim> echo "Hello, ".to_upper()
HELLO,
nim> echo "World, ".toUpper()
WORLD,

• python esque syntax (No curly or square brackets , only spaces)

import strutils

var
  fname: string
  lname: string
  age: int

echo "What is your first name: "
fname = readLine(stdin)
echo "What is your last name: "
lname = readLine(stdin)
echo "How old are you :"
age = parseInt(readLine(stdin))

echo "Hello ", $fname & " " & $lname

echo "You are ", age,  " years old"

Output:

What is your first name:
Ben
What is your last name:
Watterman
How old are you :
43
Hello Ben Watterman
You are 43 years old

Another example:

import strutils

var
  fname: string
  lname: string
  age: int

echo "What is your first name: "
fname = readLine(stdin)
echo "What is your last name: "
lname = readLine(stdin)
echo "How old are you :"
age = parseInt(readLine(stdin))

echo "Hello ", capitalizeAscii($fname) & " " & capitalizeAscii($lname) # capitalizeAscii is a funct found in strutils library

echo "You are ", age,  " years old"`

Output:

What is your first name:
ben
What is your last name:
henry
How old are you :
45
Hello Ben Henry
You are 45 years old

Another example using terminal colors

• We import "terminals" module or library to create some color on screen for our output.

import std/strutils
import std/terminal

var
  fname: string
  lname: string
  age: int


echo "What is your first name: "
fname = readLine(stdin)
echo "What is your last name: "
lname = readLine(stdin)
echo "How old are you :"
age = parseInt(readLine(stdin))



var first_name = capitalizeAscii($fname)
var last_name = capitalizeAscii($lname)

var first = $first_name
var last = $last_name

#echo "Hello ",  $first & " ", $last

stdout.styledWriteLine {styleBright}, fgBlue, $first, " " ,fgGreen, $last
echo "You are ", age,  " years old

Output

What is your first name:
ben
What is your last name:
watterman
How old are you :
43
Ben Watterman
You are 43 years old

Unfortunately "markdown" doesn't have color support when using code blocks, so a nice screenshot should suffice.

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