Objective-C vs Nim
When comparing Objective-C vs Nim, the Slant community recommends Nim for most people. In the question“What is the best programming language to learn first?” Nim is ranked 22nd while Objective-C is ranked 74th. The most important reason people chose Nim is:
There are generics, templates, macros in Nim. They can allow you to write new DSL for your application, or avoid all boilerplate stuff.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Well Documented
Objective-C's documentation exists on Apple's website, and explains language features in detail.
Pro Develop Apple applications
Similar to C# and Java, but used to develop native applications for Apple hardware.
Pro Objective-C supports an open style of dynamic binding
A style that can accommodate a simple architecture for interactive user interfaces.
Pro Great metaprogramming features
There are generics, templates, macros in Nim. They can allow you to write new DSL for your application, or avoid all boilerplate stuff.
Pro Strict typing
Checks your code at compile time.
Pro Has built-in unittest module
With built-in "unittest" module you can create test with a very readable code.
Pro Compile-time execution
Nim has a built-in VM, which executes macros and some other code at compile time. For example, you can check if you're on Windows, and Nim will generate code only for it.
Pro Has built-in async support
Nim has "asyncdispatch" module, which allows you to write async applications.
Pro Really cross-platform
The same code can be used for web, server, desktop and mobile.
Pro Easy to read
Nim has a lot of common with Python in terms of syntax. Indentation-based syntax, for/while loops.
Pro Multi paradigm
Imperative, OOP, functional programming in one language.
Pro Easy to integrate with another languages
You can use Nim with any language that can be interfaced with C. There's a tool which helps you to create new C and C++ bindings for Nim - c2nim.
Also, you can use Nim with Objective C or even JavaScript (if you're compiling for these backends).
Pro Garbage-collected
You don't need to deal with all those manual memory allocations, Nim can take care of it. But also you can use another GC, or tweak it for your real-time application or a game.
Pro Type interferencing
You only need to specify types in your procedures and objects - you don't need to specify type when you're creating a new variable (unless you're creating it without initialization).
Pro Built-in Unicode support
You can use unicode names for variables, there is "unicode" module for operations with unicode.
Pro Supports UFCS (Unified Function Call Syntax)
writeLine(stdout, "hello") can be written as stdout.writeLine("hello")
proc add(a: int): int = a + 5 can be used like 6.add.echo or 6.add().echo()
Cons
Con Odd Syntax
Objective C's syntax is very alien to other languages. Learning Objective-C first will fail to expose you to a syntax style that would be relatively familiar in almost any other language.
Con Might as well learn Swift
Swift works almost anywhere Objective C does, and it was designed to replace Objective C.
Con One of the biggest mistakes ever.
It was meant to be one of the C-style languages, but has such bad syntax design it actually is the odd duck.
Con Apple-centric and obsolete
Con Tied into Apple's eco-system.
Con More Technical
To be able to do basic tasks in Objective-C requires a strong understanding of programming.
Con Requires Understanding of C-language.
Objective-C is built on top of C, and as such, requires at least a basic understanding of how to program in C.