Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Nim (programming language)

Nim (programming language)

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Lacks reliable independent secondary sources to establish notability as required by WP:GNG. The deletion log for this article shows that it has deleted twice at AfD in 2010 and 2013 and recreated and speedy deleted twice in 2013 and 2014 under the previous title, Nimrod (programming language). This version was declined as Draft:Nim (programming language) in 2014. Speedy deletion was declined this time based on new sources not present previously. I'm not sure which sources are new since I don't have access to the old version and it was never snapshotted at archive.org but all of the sources currently offered are WP:PRIMARY, WP:UNRELIABLE blogs or otherwise unsuitable. The only reliable source offered, a Dr. Dobbs article, only makes a trivial mention of the subject. Google searches for Nim and Nimrod turned up nothing helpful. Recommending WP:SALT. Msnicki (talk) 01:30, 26 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

~~Keep~~ Delete. Disclaimer: I'm the person who declined the speedy deletion. The source I was talking about was this Dr. Dobb's article, which covers the subject in detail. That should be enough to keep the article, in my opinion, although it would be nice to find some other sources as well. I do agree about the status of the other sources cited in the article, though - I think this is the first time I've seen a Wikipedia statement cited to an anonymous Slashdot poster... — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 05:41, 26 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Unfortunately, that article is by Andreas Rumpf, who created the language, making it WP:PRIMARY and thus unsuitable for establishing notability under WP:GNG. Sorry. Msnicki (talk) 05:53, 26 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
That's a very good point. I agree that the other Dr. Dobbs article isn't enough for GNG, and I too have been unsuccessful at finding any other sources, so I've switched to "delete". This article can always be reinstated if/when there are reliable and independent sources available. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 06:24, 26 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
As I've described in greater detail below, here's a reliable, independent, significant (as required by WP:GNG), published secondary source from April 17, 2014: http://www.infoworld.com/article/2606823/application-development/146094-Ten-useful-programming-languages-you-might-not-know-about.html#slide9 — jboyme (talk) 15:42, 26 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per Mr. Stradivarius. I couldn't find any RS sources either. The test for programming languages seems to be whether they are actually being used by anyone other than the creators. If and when it's used to write actual software and has some RS sources then it could be reinstated. – Margin1522 (talk) 09:33, 26 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The programming language is being used by many people other than the language creator (in this case Andreas Rumpf). Just take a look at http://3dicc.com/terf-news/2015/3/25/terf-rendering-power-upgrade-announced, http://nimio.us/, and of course Github https://github.com/search?l=nimrod&o=desc&q=stars%3A%3E=0&s=updated&type=Repositories -- dom96 (talk) 10:19, 26 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Is harvard.edu a notable and reliable source? http://abel.harvard.edu/computing/nim/index.html? In addition to that there is a wide range of articles by independent bloggers about Nim, some even compare Nim to Rust (Rust is notable and I consider it on the same level as Nim, http://arthurtw.github.io/2015/01/12/quick-comparison-nim-vs-rust.html). There is also a very big presence on Rosetta Code: http://rosettacode.org/wiki/Category:Nim -- dom96 (talk) 10:25, 26 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think harvard.edu counts, no. If it was published by an established computer science professor then perhaps (see WP:USERGENERATED), but usually we look for things like articles in actual academic journals, or books, or news publications. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 10:45, 26 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

We currently pay developers in our company to use Nim for actual projects which are to be released over the course of the next year as (proprietary) software for financial analysis and consulting. We decided to use Nim for it's unique features (it even invented new forms of meta-programming). Also we found out about Nim because it is often mentioned in comparison to Rust (another fairly new language) and recognized by leading developers at Mozilla. What I write may not (yet) change the status of the article because there is no citable reference for my claim until we finish our product. I wanted to mention it anyway as I think that paying people for using a computer language is strong evidence for its relevance — oderwat ^talk) 11:42, 26 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

One can also people other than the creators using Nim by questions tagged in Stack Overflow (here and here). Not a lot, many people ask questions on the IRC channel. Also, Nim is featured at learnxinyminutes.com, kinda a secondary source. Caroliano (talk) 15:20, 27 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Keep The company where I work, http://www.snapdisco.com, has recently switched to Nim for our internal software development. (We develop software for image processing and computer vision.) We initially developed our software in Python, which is webservice-friendly and has NumPy and SciPy for numerical computing, but we switched to Nim for its unique combination of coding expressiveness and runtime performance. Because Nim compiles to C, we can integrate our Nim code into our Python code as Python extension modules. We are not the language creators, but our software is proprietary. How can we prove that we are using Nim? (Disclaimers: 1. This Wikipedia account, from which I'm commenting, was created for the purpose of commenting on this AfD. 2. I have never edited/contributed to the Wikipedia page for Nim, so I have no vested interest there. 3. I have never committed any code to the Nim language, so I am not a "creator". 4. My company does use the Nim programming language. 5. I am an active member of the Nim user community.) — jboyme (talk) 14:29, 26 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Also, here's another independent, published source: http://www.infoworld.com/article/2606823/application-development/146094-Ten-useful-programming-languages-you-might-not-know-about.html#slide9 In this article from April 17, 2014, Nim(rod) is described as a language "on the rise" by an independent reporter, along with Clojure, Julia (programming language), OCaml (whoops, that's hardly a new language...) and Racket (programming language) (whoops, also not so new). But the section on Nim (slide 9) is clearly significant as required by WP:GNG ("more than a trivial mention but it need not be the main topic of the source material") and the article is clearly an independent secondary source. — jboyme (talk) 15:23, 26 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I don't believe that qualifies as a WP:SECONDARY source. A secondary source provides an author's own thinking based on primary sources, generally at least one step removed from an event. It contains an author's interpretation, analysis, or evaluation of the facts, evidence, concepts, and ideas taken from primary sources. It doesn't look to me like the author was doing any more than just copy-editing the primary source for space, the same way a news organization might copy edit a press release, also without adding their own interpretation or analysis. I don't see anything here that represents his own ideas. I certainly don't get the impression the author downloaded the compiler and tried it out as he would have to for an actual review. Msnicki (talk) 16:14, 26 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I would argue that simply choosing to include Nim in this article, a stated list of languages "on the rise", is a representation of the author's own ideas: The idea that Nim is on the rise and (as the author suggests on the first slide) "could have meaningful impact on modern programming as it evolves". (The languages in the article are ordered alphabetically, so we can't read anything into Nim's position on slide 9.) I would argue that the facts the author chose to include in the terse description of Nim (such as not needing a VM or runtime) represent the author's interpretation of what is worthy about the language. For example, noting that Nim compiles down to C and thus doesn't need a VM or runtime, seems to me to be a comment on Nim's stated goal "without compromises on runtime efficiency". For about half the languages the author presents (eg, Ceylon, Clojure, Groovy, Hack), the language is described primarily in contrast to another more-widely-known language (often Java). This is also the case for the description of Nim (again, contrasting it with Java's need for the JVM). I agree that the article is not particularly well-written; but I still assert that the article (poorly-written as it is) does qualify as a WP:SECONDARY source. Finally, I disagree with the suggestion that it is necessary to download a compiler and try it out, before one can write a review about a language: One can review a language's syntax, stdlib API, or even design goals, for example. It's not necessary for the author to review the operation of the Nim compiler specifically, for the article to be a valid WP:SECONDARY source about the Nim language. — jboyme (talk) 17:12, 26 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Well, look at it this way: We have a definition of and a prohibition against WP:OR. My take is that if an editor here were to create a similar summary of primary information, we would judge that as allowed because there's nothing original there, only a paraphrasing of the original source. A secondary source has to have some original thought to make it secondary and this article doesn't have that. Does that help? Msnicki (talk) 17:34, 26 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Computing-related deletion discussions. NORTH AMERICA¹⁰⁰⁰ 10:10, 26 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Keep Nim has [more than 400 repositories in github, authored by 55 different people. It is a project active since 2008, with over 200 forks and 88 people that at some point contributed some code to the compiler or standard library.

There are many articles about Nim in blogs and such:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8811132

Of course, they are self published and not peer reviewed, but many of them are posted to Hacker News and r/programming, openly discussed there, usually errors are pointed and the author accepts the feedback and correct the original article, etc. And it is those blog posts that normal people rely when they need to, for example, discover how to make a Nim library.

And everyone that is from outside Wikipedia are surprised to discover that Nim isn't considered notable enough for wikipedia (and those who aren't usually abandoned wikipedia editing due to those deletion sprees):

https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/2r06ej/what_is_special_about_nim/cnb8s9i

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6627318

http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=5564931&cid=47724581

Common sense indicates that Nim is notable. Caroliano (talk) 15:12, 27 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]