Re: What does "direct hardware access" in Nim mean?

2016-09-17 Thread jangko
I don't think modern OSes will allow any user space application to access any 
hardware directly. Any hardware access must be performed through system 
calls(low level e.g. asm), which often encapsulated into function calls(higher 
level).

But beside normal user space application, Nim can produce kernel space program 
or device driver that can access hardware directly.

Nim also can produce a program that will be put in an embedded system. In such 
environment, usually there is no OS or only primitive OS, and Nim produced 
program have higher chances to access hardware direcly.


Re: What does "direct hardware access" in Nim mean?

2016-09-17 Thread jlp765
Nim also allows [Assembler statements and 
expressions](http://forum.nim-lang.org///nim-lang.org/docs/manual.html#statements-and-expressions-assembler-statement)


Re: What does "direct hardware access" in Nim mean?

2016-09-16 Thread Krux02
It means that when hardware has mapped itself to some data in memory, nim can 
just read it and use it. I don't know how such things work in Python, but in 
java it is always a big hassle, because java always needs these buffer objects 
that on one hand give what you want to do with pointers, but with a lot of 
overhead. Also calling into C from Java is always a pain, because you can't 
just call into C functions. This is supposed to be a much smoother experience 
in Nim.


What does "direct hardware access" in Nim mean?

2016-09-16 Thread Atlas
I've been a Python programmer, far away from low-level stuffs.