Things I like about Zig as a Go Programmer | Hacker News Reader

Things I like about Zig as a Go Programmer

medium.com

39 pointshenrik_w30 comments

zig does seem like a much more reasonable c/c++ replacement than rust.

Agreed. It even brings all of the use after frees, memory overflows, data races etc. along so C/C++ programmers will feel right at home!

And we'll keep building the systems that power the world so you can continue to feel right at home. You're welcome!

So life critical software will continue to have completely avoidable bugs in it, got it.

it is possible to write bug free code in many compiled languages

But nobody does?

It's a job security thing. Otherwise you deliver the perfect program and then there's no need for you anymore.

Nope, we the humans are just not that good at programming.

I was being facetious. It's kind of understandable if we're still bad at programming, we haven't been doing it for very long, just since WWII really.

This is just simply not so, or at best, the odds of writing a nontrivial bug free program in any language are negligible. Also, we are talking specifically of C, C++, and Zig here. Three compiled languages among hundreds.

Only if your name is Knuth--put your money where your mouth is.

i enjoyed this laugh, thank you

Yes, Zig is friendly to C/C++ programmers. This is a big advantage of Zig.

The distinction I’ve heard is that Zig is a “better C” and Rust is a “better C++.” I haven’t done a lot of programming in any of these languages, but as an outsider it certainly seems apt.

These can be true, while at the same time, “Rust is a better C.”

Zig and Rust have a lot of the same and a lot of different stuff to offer. I drank the Rust koolaid, but I thought for a long time Zig or Nim would be the most popular C alternative.

It’s all about the macros, it seems. Rust’s macros are not the best in the world, but they are really good.

That's not a good analogy. Zig shares much blood with C, but Rust doesn't share much blood with C++. Though, from the complexity view, Rust can be viewed as another C++ (or C+++).

There's a lot to like about Zig, especially related to metaprogramming. Unfortunately, bulletproof memory safety is table stakes for a modern language. Without a garbage collector or borrow checker, Zig is DOA for any use case that involves untrusted data.

Maybe there's a few niches (single player games?) that don't need memory safety...

You can always use a garbage collecting allocator with Zig, if you're that paranoid anout it.

For that better use D, Nim, Swift, C#, Go, designed from the ground up with one in mind, and whole ecosystem counts on it, instead of having coloured libraries.

By convention, all Zig libraries have functions that take an allocator as input from the user. Your application can use libgc[1] and pass the allocator to any library function you use, and not worry about deallocating afterwards.

[0]: https://github.com/linusg/zig-libgc

You missed the part of ecosystem designed with a GC in mind.

Does an ecosystem designed with custom allocators (including gc) in mind not count for anything?

Reasonable and memory unsafe. Pick one.

While it offers Modula-2 like safety, with a syntax more appealing to C developers, in the 21st century we expect a little more from a systems language.

I appreciate and respect the "love it!" factor that Zig brings to the table. At the same time, IMO we shouldn't allow infatuation override the hard-learned lessons of our area.

Rust can be a drag but when we're talking compiling to machine code, I'll still prefer it to any other language that does not offer memory safety enforced by the compiler.

Furthermore, Zig is still changing, and the pace with which it is improved doesn't give me much hope. I'm open to have my mind changed so I'm observing from the sidelines. It might turn out to be the best of everything but at least to me it's too early to tell.

The article didn't mention Rust at all. Why do you?

Why are you asking?

I was tempted to mention a few more but figured I don't want to make the comment too long.

The thing that's great about Zig is that it's compiled languages deconstructed. It makes us realize the things that get conflated in other languages and lets us mix-n-match as a matter of course.

I love both these languages

You know, that's not allowed in some states.

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