> Rust just doesn't offer a forgiving mode that approaches the kind of ergonomy you get from a less strict, garbage-collected language.
Because it's impossible (without sacrificing Rust's basic goals). And Nim doesn't prove otherwise, because Nim doesn't share those goals.
You are framing safe vs. performant as a fundamental tradeoff. It is not, and that is the entire point of Rust. Nim does not allow you to remove that tradeoff. Rust does. That's why Rust is suitable for different projects than Nim is.
In other words, Nim's safety features are not equivalent to what Rust has. They have a performance cost in Nim and don't in Rust. So in order to make your "sweet spot" of a language that scales up and down a reality, then you're going to have to either convince me that I should accept the performance overhead of Nim's features or that I should give up safety.
I don't believe that it is possible to combine a loose, GC'd mode with a memory-safe, non-GC'd mode in the way you want. The best you can do is what Rust already does, with Rc and RefCell. What people observe with Rc and RefCell is that you do indeed get back your freedom to make aliases and mutate at will, but you still have to know how the borrow checker works. So Rc and RefCell get little use in practice, because once you know how the lifetime system works you might as well just use the ownership system instead of paying the cost of Rc.
Even if it acquires ownership and borrowing, Nim will not be able to escape this dilemma, barring some fundamental research advance.
Because it's impossible (without sacrificing Rust's basic goals). And Nim doesn't prove otherwise, because Nim doesn't share those goals.
You are framing safe vs. performant as a fundamental tradeoff. It is not, and that is the entire point of Rust. Nim does not allow you to remove that tradeoff. Rust does. That's why Rust is suitable for different projects than Nim is.
In other words, Nim's safety features are not equivalent to what Rust has. They have a performance cost in Nim and don't in Rust. So in order to make your "sweet spot" of a language that scales up and down a reality, then you're going to have to either convince me that I should accept the performance overhead of Nim's features or that I should give up safety.
I don't believe that it is possible to combine a loose, GC'd mode with a memory-safe, non-GC'd mode in the way you want. The best you can do is what Rust already does, with Rc and RefCell. What people observe with Rc and RefCell is that you do indeed get back your freedom to make aliases and mutate at will, but you still have to know how the borrow checker works. So Rc and RefCell get little use in practice, because once you know how the lifetime system works you might as well just use the ownership system instead of paying the cost of Rc.
Even if it acquires ownership and borrowing, Nim will not be able to escape this dilemma, barring some fundamental research advance.