Comment by audunw
4 hours ago
Do you have to bring up D in every Zig related post?
I do like D. I've written a game in it and enjoyed it a lot. I would encourage others to check it out.
But it's not a C replacement. BetterC feels like an afterthought. A nice bonus. Not a primary focus. E.g. the language is designed to use exceptions for error handling, so of course there's no feature for BetterC dedicated to error handling.
Being a better C is the one and only focus of Zig. So it has features for doing error handling without exceptions.
D is not going to replace C, perhaps for the same reasons subsets of C++ didn't.
I don't know if Zig and Rust will. But there's a better chance since they actually bring a lot of stuff to the table that arguably make them better at being a C-like language than C. I am really hyped to see how embedded development will be in Zig after the new IO interface lands.
He doesn't have to, he _gets_ to! Its knowledge exchange. Take it as a gift and not self-promotion. There's no money in this game so don't treat it like guerilla marketing. Treat it like excited people pushing the limits of technology.
This is, like, the most ironic comment ever posted on HN. An article about cat nutrition could hit the front page and the Rust fanbois would hijack the conversation.
In this case, however, Walter was not the one that brought up D. He was replying to a comment by someone promoting Zig with the claim that only Zig and C++ have ever had a strategy to replace C. That is objectively false. There's no way to look at what D does in that area and make that sort of claim. Walter and anyone else is right to challenge false statements.
This is a bad comment in so many ways.
Walter's short limited comment was quite relevant.