BountySource Update: The Road to v1.0

06 August 2016 Dominik Picheta

This was cross-posted from update #4 on BountySource.

We are now in the fourth month of the Nim BountySource fundraiser and here is this month’s update[1]. Once again this month, we have beat our previous donation record of $1280 having raised over $1600 over the course of July! That’s now 4 months in a row that your monthly donations have been increasing. As always we are absolutely blown away by your contributions, myself and the rest of the Nim team are extremely thankful for them. It’s not only helping us pay for the necessary expenses (like for example the server that http://nim-lang.org runs on) but it also inspires us to keep going and to make Nim the best programming language that it can be.

As mentioned in last month’s update, we have begun the process of engaging with the Nim community through a survey. This survey has now been open for more than a month and will be closing very soon (in about 2 days), so if you haven’t answered it yet, now would be a perfect time to do so. You can find the survey here: http://nim-lang.org/survey.

The survey itself has been designed for three types of people: Nim users, ex-Nim users and people who have never used Nim before. This means that you have no excuse not to answer it[2]. There are almost 700 submissions and after the survey is finalised, a blog post will be written with a thorough analysis.

It is my hope that the survey analysis will give the Nim team a good idea of what needs to be implemented before version 1.0 can be released. Personally, I hope to make a thorough review of the standard library to ensure that it is ready for the “1.0 backwards compatibility lock”[3]. Although I myself have been very busy lately[4], Araq has been working very hard to fix High Priority issues, ahead of the 1.0 release. And as always, there has also been a lot of pull requests from a wide range of Nim users.

Lastly, I would like to mention Nim in Action once again. I have recently finished the final chapter. All that remains now are corrections (based mainly on your feedback, huge thanks to everyone for reading!) and a final review. The book will then be put into production[5] with an estimated print date of around the 20th of January (as usual delays are very much possible). If you have not yet picked up the book, now would be a perfect time to do so. There is still time for you to give feedback about the book, and for me to improve it based on your remarks. It is not often that you can influence a book in this way, and it is my hope that you will help me make this book one of the best resources for learning Nim!

As always, many thanks for reading and if you have any questions or feedback feel free to get in touch via email at [email protected] or via Twitter.

1 - These updates have so far been fairly regular and it is my hope to write at least one a month. Yep, I am patting myself on the back :)

2 - I joke of course, don’t worry about if you don’t have the time :)

3 - After version 1.0, it is typical for a piece of software (especially a programming language) to ensure that backwards compatibility is not broken between further minor versions until a new major version such as 2.0 is released.

4 - Writing a book, moving to Switzerland to start a new job, and playing Pokemon Go has certainly kept me busy.

5 - Basically the brilliant guys at Manning will process the book so that it looks good in a printed format.