Comment by morning-coffee

(Rust user here, but admirer from afar of Zig and the principles it seems rooted in.)

My peanut gallery observation is that a very bright person named Andrew set out on a journey of hard work to come up with a new language. Along the way he (and others) solved many tough ancillary problems related to the toolchain of this new language and how it should provide a useful path for interoperability and migration from code written in other languages.

The toolchain innovations were noticed, embraced, and leveraged by users of other languages as it made their lives easier in contexts where they weren't even using the Zig language.

Now, for Andrew to make even more innovative progress on his endeavor, he needs to undo some of the toolchain innovation and remove complexity that was initially used to bootstrap his endeavor. Removing complexity (from language) is one of the admired traits of this bright person, and here they are applying that good trait again to move the whole project forward.

But 'lo! Other users of the toolchain innovation will be affected... some would say they even appear "entitled" to these innovations... as if their collective need somehow outweighs Andrew's right to direct his energies to his project in the way he decides.

This whole thing smells like a story I read once... I think it was called "The Fountainhead".