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Comment by ff317

4 months ago

https://ziglang.org/ is a solid future C-replacement, IMHO. There's pretty much no downsides and all upsides from a C hacker's perspective. It just hasn't reached 1.0 yet!

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ff317

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flohofwoe  4 months ago

Zig is a nice language, but from a 10000 ft view it's not fundamentally different from C (thankfully) - at least from the CPU's point of view. Any hardware that's a good match for C is also a good match for Zig.

baranul  4 months ago

Not everyone thinks of Zig as a "no downsides and all upsides" C-replacement. First, a lot of people will take issue with it still being in beta and it being unknown how many more years will it take to reach 1.0. There are a bunch of C-replacements, or at least viable alternative languages out there. Both old and new. With more "C-killers" likely to pop-up in the not so distant future.

There are also a lot of people, after doing their Zig language reviews, that don't like it. Muratori (Handmade Hero) won't touch it and there was a recent article that's been covered on here and other sites, where the person explained why they stopped using it (linked below).

https://strongly-typed-thoughts.net/blog/zig-2025 (Zig; what I think after months of using it)

  • hitekker  4 months ago

    IIRC, the blog you linked was written by someone who loves Rust and other languages which have, to say the least, a different philosophy from C and Zig.

    I'm not familiar with Muratori's opinion on Zig; do you have a link?

    • baranul  4 months ago

      Muratori, who is a well known C programmer and instructor, has made his dislike of Zig quite clear[1]. Others, like Tsoding (many videos) and Kihlander (doesn't like syntax among other things), have given clear reasons for their dislike of Zig or why it was not their preference[2][3]. Various recognized programmers are not going to go along with, "no downsides and all upsides". Which for any language still in beta, would be a huge stretch in believability, by itself.

      It's not a Rust thing, as many C/C++ programmers are not advocates of it either and if venturing out to something else, can prefer other languages. Tsoding has even dunked on Rust as being unreadable[4].

      [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVVhwALd0o4 (Language Perf... from 29:50)

      [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r49hMsruwps (Tsoding when Zig :-))

      [3]: https://kihlander.net/post/a-zig-diary/

      [4]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omVpuhch9MQ (Rust Is UNREADABLE)