Maybe I'm not that deep into programming, but I don't understand the hype about Zig?
I programmed in rust a bit and can't say I'm an expert, but in my view rust mostly-solved the memory management problem at compile time and without a GC, and it works very well. The biggest con and cost I've always seen repeated so far is that "it's slow to compile", and I get that, if you're past 250 crates the final --release link tends to become noticeable, but there were improvements to incremental compilation.
On the other hand - looking at the syntax from this post - Zig feels a blend of javascript, python and golang syntax that still requires memory management. So a nicer-written C that inherits all the issues from C? From the post: no functional programming, data mutation, memory leak, double-free, memory corruption.
Personally I'd rather trade a couple minutes of final link every time when this is the other option.
yeah to me zig exists as a counter-reaction to rust. which means avoiding both the good and bad things rust does. and rust does a lot of things right, so...
Rust is for devs who think "if only c++ had a few more features, it would be perfect". Zig is for devs who think "if only C had fewer features, it would be perfect"
Give it a chance! Rust hasn't even had its bar mitzvah yet and C++ is already buying a Porsche during its midlife crisis.
Yes, on paper zig has more features than C, but what zig has is explicitness. C has a big murky space of implicitness. For example, there might be 5 different zig features which can be used at various times you might use a void* in C, buy the conceptual space of void* fully contains(and then some) the spaces of those zig features.
plqbfbv · · focus · HN ↗
I programmed in rust a bit and can't say I'm an expert, but in my view rust mostly-solved the memory management problem at compile time and without a GC, and it works very well. The biggest con and cost I've always seen repeated so far is that "it's slow to compile", and I get that, if you're past 250 crates the final --release link tends to become noticeable, but there were improvements to incremental compilation.
On the other hand - looking at the syntax from this post - Zig feels a blend of javascript, python and golang syntax that still requires memory management. So a nicer-written C that inherits all the issues from C? From the post: no functional programming, data mutation, memory leak, double-free, memory corruption.
Personally I'd rather trade a couple minutes of final link every time when this is the other option.
slopinthebag · · focus · HN ↗
IncreasePosts · · focus · HN ↗
slopinthebag · · focus · HN ↗
IncreasePosts · · focus · HN ↗
Yes, on paper zig has more features than C, but what zig has is explicitness. C has a big murky space of implicitness. For example, there might be 5 different zig features which can be used at various times you might use a void* in C, buy the conceptual space of void* fully contains(and then some) the spaces of those zig features.
[deleted] · · focus · HN ↗
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