Java vs. Nim vs. Scala vs. ZenScript Comparison Chart

Nim is a statically typed compiled systems programming language. It combines successful concepts from mature languages like Python, Ada and Modula. Nim generates native dependency-free executables, not dependent on a virtual machine, which are small and allow easy redistribution. Nim's memory management is deterministic and customizable with destructors and move semantics, inspired by C++ and Rust. It is well-suited for embedded, hard-realtime systems. Modern concepts like zero-overhead iterators and compile-time evaluation of user-defined functions, in combination with the preference of value-based datatypes allocated on the stack, lead to extremely performant code. Support for various backends: it compiles to C, C++ or JavaScript so that Nim can be used for all backend and frontend needs.

ZenScript originated from MineTweaker where a simple programming language is needed to allow users without programming knowledge to be able to execute simple commands by following the tutorials for it. Originally MineTweaker had a simple one-line-at-a-time parsed scripting system, but it quickly became clear that it wasn't flexible enough, so a simple parsed language was created. This parsed language worked quite well but was very inefficient as each value was wrapped into its own object. ZenScript allows mixed typed and typeless behavior. You don't need to define types anywhere, the compile will infer them where possible and exhibit typeless behavior when the type is effectively unknown. In nearly all the cases, the type is perfectly known and execution runs at native Java speed. Since there are types, they can be documented and enforced.