Comment by codr7

2 months ago

There have several attempts at cleaning up C without giving up too much of its simplicity; from what I can see, Zig is the only one even close to reaching critical mass.

A programming language is always going to make some kind of compromise; better at some things, worse at others.

Simplicity/power and safety pull the design in different directions.

Zig hits on a lot of Zen of Python.

> Beautiful is better than ugly.

> Explicit is better than implicit.

> Simple is better than complex.

> Readability counts.

What really sets Zig apart from the usual suspects (C, C++, Rust) is that it has first class compile-time reflection capabilities built into the language (comptime, @field, @typeInfo, etc.) rather than bolted on as macros or templates.

  • > Python

    Funny you make that analogy. I remember back when the two contending C alternatives were Zig and Nim, with Nim being syntactically almost a Python clone.

    It seems Nim has gone the way of Crystal (Ruby version of Nim) and is just kind of there but mostly forgotten and doomed to be abandoned unless it finds a niche.

    > What sets Zig apart is compile-time

    I see this claim a lot, but I'm not sure. I think it's the fact that Zig is more or less still C syntax and semantics, just... fixed. The way it does comptime does seem better than how other languages do it, but I haven't actually used it, much less for long enough to judge it properly.

I don't mind the language having substantially worse "something" as long as it can be a smaller alternative for Rust, for the lack of a better word. Of course, there always needs to be some compromise. I don't mind that. I just have two requirements, and am curious to see how people have tackled that problem.

  • Sure, and I'm just as curious.

    But at the same time, I'm pretty sure that smaller/simpler is going to mean less safe.

    • I think the opposite is true. The Rust philosophy is the idea that a complicated type system should ensure safety. This may work to some degree, but the overall complexity will introduce new issues. I say this as someone who was really excited about type systems in the past, but Rust is ... meh.

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