More or less OT.
I keep hearing about both Zig and D as interesting C-like low level languages with better satefies/ergonomics. I wonder if someone who's familiar with both would like to discuss the main differences...?
I keep hearing about both Zig and D as interesting C-like low level languages with better satefies/ergonomics. I wonder if someone who's familiar with both would like to discuss the main differences...?
In case of Zig, I think it's a very good modern C alternative. Zig can do what C can do, can interoperate w/ C (e.g. importing C headers), and offers new features that are useful (comptime, slices, error type). It's like Go, but without GC and a large runtime.
(Rust is more aiming for C++)
For example, consider the versatility of the '.' operator. It does pointer dereference, static field access and class/namespace member/method access. In all those cases I want to access "a thing from this other thing". Having 3 operators in a language (., ->, ::) is easier for a compiler writer but it puts more cognitive load on the developer.
Now consider type extensions. As a language designer you could think: "if a developer wishes to add methods to a type Vector that exists in a third party library, then in their project, the developer would use some special syntax" like maybe:
class Vector { void json() { ... } }
Instead, the compiler can help you out. Just declare a regular function anywhere like so:
void json(Vector v) { ... }
json(v);
v.json();
This is just one feature of D, and it's filled with features. Though I don't really use D in my day to day work, it's wonderful to see how the authors thought about hard problems in language design and implemented elegant solutions. I think D deserves more recognition for the things it absolutely hit out of the park as a general purpose programming language.
Only in the sense that the language is simple and small, but C pays for that by being inexpressive (you can find families of C++ programs for which an equivalent C program would require exponentially more code). Zig, on the other hand, is small and simple while being just as expressive as C++. It achieves that through a remarkable observation: many primitive features can be avoided with a powerful enough compile-time computation mechanism with introspection.
Zig is so revolutionary in its design that it's hard to compare it to anything else. Or, put another way, any comparison is sure to miss out on some very foundational piece. So yes, in some sense Zig is like C (simple, low-level), but it's as expressive as C++. In another sense, Zig is like Scheme (minimalistic elegance), and yet it feels familiar and it does not rely on macros for its core power. In other ways it's like Go (easy to learn, easy cross-compilation), but it gives full control and is more flexible.
At this point, Zig is sui generis.
Many developers underestimate the importance of metaprogramming in systems languages for ensuring quality and security. Defects scale proportional to the lines of code. Strong metaprogramming facilities can reduce the lines of code required several-fold.
I mean, Zig has an interesting combination of functionality, but I wouldn't say that the individual pieces are revolutionary. Who knows though, the whole could be more revolutionary than the sum of it's parts...
Zig's comptime is revolutionary and really new in that it replaces many other separate features and is the basis of Zig's minimalism. Figuring out how to discard features is much more difficult than adding them, and simplicity is something that's impossible to add once it's lost. The message is not the existence of a rather general compile time execution, but that with a particular design of such a mechanism you can do away with other things.
D also has a betterC mode that removes some of those "kitchen sink" features, but I couldn't say how popular it's use is. Many people who use D like some of those features. Zig's more minimalistic approach to language features is closer to C's approach.
Zig likely has been influenced by D (among other languages), but I wouldn't be surprised if D's new importC functionality has been influenced by Zig.
I don't use D (or C or C++) at work, but learning D and using it at home has made me a much better programmer in the languages I use for work. Maybe I would have learned those lessons with C or C++, but I guess I took more easily to D than them.
You're agreeing with me then! D was pretty explicitly created due to WalterBright's (incidentally a prolific 60k+-karma HN user!), frustration with C++ and presumably the problems that stem from its requirement to maintain almost a 100% C compatibility. Bright is the founder of Digital Mars, a small company developing C and C++ (and D) compilers, so he has first-hand experience. Since 2007 D has been co-developed by Andrei Alexandrescu, a well-known C++ expert and one of the pioneers of template metaprogramming.
but i agree with D being a kitchen sink language, trying to be many things, but never being the absolute best at anything, which i think is why it never really took off
i am really hopeful for Zig, trying to be a more pragmatic C replacement
I think "cult following" is used here like you would for movies, it’s not actually cult-like, it’s more that it’s a rather small, close-knit community.