It’s hard to do something that is truly novel these days. Though I’d argue that Zigs upcoming approach to Async IO is indeed novel on its own. I haven’t seen anything like it in an imperative language.

What’s important is the integration of various ideas, and the nuances of their implementation. Walter Bright brings up D comptime in every Zig post. I’ve used D. Yet I find Zigs comptime to be more useful and innovative in its implementation details. It’s conceptually simpler yet - to me - better.

You mention Ada. I’ve only dabbled with it, so correct me if I’m wrong, but it doesn’t have anything as powerful as Zigs comptime? I think people get excited about not just the ideas themselves, but the combination and integration of the ideas.

In the end I think it’s also subjective. A lot of people like the syntax and combination of features that Zig provides. I can’t point to one singular thing that makes me excited about Zig