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Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Nim (programming language)

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Nim (programming language)

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Nim (programming language) (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)
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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]

We do not accept user-generated sources as evidence of notability. Msnicki (talk) 17:03, 27 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Learnxinyminutes is not a self published source. Outside contributions must submit a pull-request where there is some degree of peer review and finally must be accepted by the website/repository maintainers to feature in the page. The stackoverflow and irc channel link are simply further evidence that the language is used "by anyone other than the creators" that Margin1522 requested. Caroliano (talk) 20:46, 27 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The test for programming languages seems to be whether they are actually being used by anyone other than the creators. -- There is only one creator, but there certainly are many more than one user, so by your own criterion the language is notable. -- 98.171.173.90 (talk) 12:39, 28 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]
    I think that's a valid source, and can be counted towards notability. Even with this, though, I don't think we yet have enough to meet WP:GNG's requirement of "significant coverage". We have a paragraph here, and a short mention here. I think we need to see at least one more solid source before this passes the guidelines. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 17:04, 28 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
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]
I looked at all three of those discussion pages and on every one of them, several people explained that we decide whether to keep an article based on whether there are reliable independent secondary sources and that there are no such sources supporting notability of this subject. We do not accept primary, self-published and unreliable sources including things like blogs. We also do not keep an article because there's another article on WP that you think is even worse. If you think it's worse, go ahead and nominate it for AfD. If you're right, we'll delete that one, too. All of this was explained in those very pages you offered so I have no idea why you think they support your !vote to keep. If you would like to have an article on Nim, all it takes is a couple short articles on the subject by people who are independent of the creator of the language offering their thoughts about it. Techie magazines are dying for content. Get them to publish your articles, then come back here and you can have your article here, no problem. Heck, we don't even where it's published as long as it's a reliable source with a reputation for fact-checking and editorial control. It could be a hobbyist magazine or even TV Guide for all we care. But publish somewhere else, first. Convince them this an important subject and then you'll convince us. It's not that hard. Msnicki (talk) 15:54, 27 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
It was more of a WP:COMMON pledge. Open source projects that are not made by academics or big names in the industry, do not usually have peer reviewed articles or traditional press about them. It remembers me of Anki deletion. Despite already having tens of thousands blog and forum posts about it, and being THE reference for spaced repetition flashcard software (to the point it is difficult to find an independent blog post about that who won't cite Anki), it was almost deemed not notable by Wikipedia. Of course one or two shitty articles of the type "I tried anki for a day" (or not even that) in mainstream magazines are a infinitely more strong notability indicators than hundreds of much higher quality independent blog posts (/sarcasm). Nim right now is nowhere near the size of Anki userbase though.
I understand the need for solid and not easily abusable guidelines for notability and RS, but IMHO this is a case where common sense must also be weighted. I don't think wikipedia will become better by removing Nim's article. Yes, people in the links I posted explained the reason it was deleted, nonetheless there was many people from outside Nim that expressed the desire to see a Nim article here, and that it looked like just a big burocracy issue (see WP:BURO), that your post also seems to support. Also on those links, there are many people that stopped contributing to Wikipedia once the work they put editing a page about something they use and think is important was thrown in the trash when the article was deleted. This don't helps Wikipedia.
And I never said to keep this article because there are worse ones. I think it should be kept by it's own importance. Caroliano (talk) 20:25, 27 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Can this article be merged anywhere? If the consensus ends up that Nim is still not notable enough for a stand alone article per Wikipedia rules, I argue that it is still plenty notable enough for being in Wikipedia (see WP:NOTEWORTHY). Is there some "Lists of new programming languages from 2008" or a comparative table where it fits? If there is not, I think such a page should be created, as it would remove much attrition from deletion requests like this (it would not be a total deletion, more of a move), as well as having the redirect in place will prevent newbies from re-creating the article thinking Wikipedia is missing information (as already happened with Nim, as per one of my links). Less useless energy dispended across language deletions and more useful and organized content in Wikipedia. Seems like a win-win. Caroliano (talk) 15:49, 28 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    Yes, merge is always an option at AfD but it's helpful if you can identify where you'd like it merged. Msnicki (talk) 16:39, 28 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    A quick search brought up List of programming languages by type#Imperative languages, but that would be more of a redirect target than a merge target. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 17:19, 28 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]
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