> He also wants a garbage collector (pg. 57) and Pascal / ML family syntax (pg. 58). He clearly wants https://nim-lang.org/.
Since this was written in 2005, Rust/the Rust model didn't exist, so maybe Rust is memory managed/ML enough? But I am interested in looking at Nim. Had no idea it was ML influenced.
And I think I read in another comment Sweeney hired an engineer to write a new language called Verse.
FYI Nim also follows the Rust model with sink/lent annotations[0] + optimizes the (not yet default) automatic reference counting with static analysis so that RC overhead is minimized. Nim is like something between Pascal / Rust / Python, not sure why it is not more widely used.
> Sweeney hired an engineer to write a new language called Verse.
I think a lot of people want Nim, but either don't know about it, or some language feature turned them off. There are a few polarizing language design choices, but every language has something. Perhaps it just needs a killer app using it in some visible fashion (e.g., Lua in Neovim and Hammerspoon).
I was turned off by the Windows Defender issue. I can't release consumer software written in Nim if every executable compiled with their toolchain is flagged as malware and the downloads silently halted.
For context apparently Nim had a few articles written on how to write “red team” software with it and it also got popular with malware writers. Ultimately there’s an issue with AVs being lazy and flagging all Nim binaries as malware. Some of them even ignore binaries properly signed with good keys. Just another reason AVs are terrible.
Glad to see progress on this, because I really liked Nim when I learnt it and this is my only blocker to consider it for a few personal projects.
I understand the necessity to detect known malware, but AVs are definitely terrible if they're unable to fingerprint the actual malicious code rather than the general traits of the toolchain used.
Also, signed binaries have proven close to useless since newly released binaries/installers raise a warning on Windows until several people run them anyway.
He also wants a garbage collector (pg. 57) and Pascal / ML family syntax (pg. 58). He clearly wants https://nim-lang.org/.