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+====
+Home
+====
+
+Welcome to Nim
+--------------
+
+**Nim** (formerly known as "Nimrod") is a statically typed, imperative
+programming language that tries to give the programmer ultimate power without
+compromises on runtime efficiency. This means it focuses on compile-time
+mechanisms in all their various forms.
+
+Beneath a nice infix/indentation based syntax with a
+powerful (AST based, hygienic) macro system lies a semantic model that supports
+a soft realtime GC on thread local heaps. Asynchronous message passing is used
+between threads, so no "stop the world" mechanism is necessary. An unsafe
+shared memory heap is also provided for the increased efficiency that results
+from that model.
+
+
+Nim is efficient
+================
+
+* Native code generation (currently via compilation to C), not dependent on a
+  virtual machine: **Nim produces small executables without dependencies
+  for easy redistribution.**
+* A fast **non-tracing** garbage collector that supports soft
+  real-time systems (like games).
+* System programming features: Ability to manage your own memory and access the
+  hardware directly. Pointers to garbage collected memory are distinguished
+  from pointers to manually managed memory.
+* Zero-overhead iterators.
+* Cross-module inlining.
+* Dynamic method binding with inlining and without virtual method table.
+* Compile time evaluation of user-defined functions.
+* Whole program dead code elimination: Only *used functions* are included in
+  the executable.
+* Value-based datatypes: For instance, objects and arrays can be allocated on
+  the stack.
+
+
+Nim is expressive
+=================
+
+* **The Nim compiler and all of the standard libraries are implemented in
+  Nim.**
+* Built-in high level datatypes: strings, sets, sequences, etc.
+* Modern type system with local type inference, tuples, variants,
+  generics, etc.
+* User-defineable operators; code with new operators is often easier to read
+  than code which overloads built-in operators. For example, a
+  ``=~`` operator is defined in the ``re`` module.
+* Macros can modify the abstract syntax tree at compile time.
+
+
+Nim is elegant
+==============
+
+* Macros can use the imperative paradigm to construct parse trees. Nim
+  does not require a different coding style for meta programming.
+* Macros cannot change Nim's syntax because there is no need for it.
+  Nim's syntax is flexible enough.
+* Statements are grouped by indentation but can span multiple lines.
+  Indentation must not contain tabulators so the compiler always sees
+  the code the same way as you do.
+
+
+Nim plays nice with others
+==========================
+
+* The Nim Compiler runs on Windows, Linux, BSD and Mac OS X.
+  Porting to other platforms is easy.
+* **The Nim Compiler can also generate C++ or Objective C for easier
+  interfacing.**
+* There are lots of bindings: for example, bindings to GTK2, the Windows API,
+  the POSIX API, OpenGL, SDL, Cairo, Python, Lua, TCL, X11, libzip, PCRE,
+  libcurl, mySQL and SQLite are included in the standard distribution or
+  can easily be obtained via the
+  `Nimble package manager <https://github.com/nim-lang/nimble>`_.
+* A C to Nim conversion utility: New bindings to C libraries are easily
+  generated by ``c2nim``.
+
+
+Roadmap to 1.0
+==============
+
+Please have a look at
+this `wiki page <https://github.com/nim-lang/Nim/wiki/Roadmap>`_ for
+an up-to-date overview.