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Interview with Zig language creator Andrew Kelley [video]

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Re: Interview with Zig language creator Andrew Kelley [video]

#11

Post by pron »

Kednicma wrote: post #3

I hope that we're not stuck writing piles of low-level code for all eternity. We don't need more than a few pages of each low-level language, and while I do really like Zig's qualities compared to C, I'd still like to minimize the amount of Zig or C total that has to be written. I think that our community's equivalent of "where's my flying car?" is "where's my higher-level language?"

Who's the "we" who are "stuck"? The vast majority of programmers don't use low-level languages for writing applications even today, but there is a big niche of domains where close to perfect control is needed and that's the domain low level languages like C, C++, Ada, Rust and Zig try to address. I wouldn't (and don't) write "ordinary" applications in those languages, but I don't think the domains they target will ever go away or become less important.

Re: Interview with Zig language creator Andrew Kelley [video]

#12

Post by logicchains »

notacoward wrote: post #7
Kednicma wrote: post #3

I hope that we're not stuck writing piles of low-level code for all eternity. We don't need more than a few pages of each low-level language, and while I do really like Zig's qualities compared to C, I'd still like to minimize the amount of Zig or C total that has to be written. I think that our community's equivalent of "where's my flying car?" is "where's my higher-level language?"

I think that's a valid point that needs to be made in this conversation, and it's super-sad that somebody downvoted you for it. I've spent much of my career writing low-level code in low-level languages because I had to, usually in C and usually because I was in resource-constrained environments where tight control over CPU and memory footprints was necessary. There's absolutely room for languages that improve progra…

It'd argue that the constraints of writing lower-level code can actually lead to producing better code. For instance, idiomatic C, Rust and Zig is to pass a buffer into some function, that it then fills, and the caller handles the output. This leads to having more pure, side-effect free functions, compared to the approach some higher-level languages will take of having the function allocate some stuff in its body, process it, maybe do some IO, and pass it to another function. They encourage "imperative shell, functional core", because of how difficult it is to manage memory/ownership if every random function is allocating promiscuously.

Low-level languages encourage the use of clean ownership patterns, which ultimately leads to cleaner design.

Re: Interview with Zig language creator Andrew Kelley [video]

#13

Post by notacoward »

pron wrote: post #11
Kednicma wrote: post #3

I hope that we're not stuck writing piles of low-level code for all eternity. We don't need more than a few pages of each low-level language, and while I do really like Zig's qualities compared to C, I'd still like to minimize the amount of Zig or C total that has to be written. I think that our community's equivalent of "where's my flying car?" is "where's my higher-level language?"

Who's the "we" who are "stuck"? The vast majority of programmers don't use low-level languages for writing applications even today, but there is a big niche of domains where close to perfect control is needed and that's the domain low level languages like C, C++, Ada, Rust and Zig try to address. I wouldn't (and don't) write "ordinary" applications in those languages, but I don't think the domains they target will ev…

> The vast majority of programmers don't use low-level languages for writing applications

I work in a multi-million-line codebase, a significant majority of which is very far from that "need perfect control" domain but is written in a what I'd call a mid-level language - a high-abstraction dialect of C++. So I'd say GP is correct, that too many people are stuck writing code in the wrong language for the task at hand. The need for languages like Zig to improve the lower-level experience (which, as you say, is not going away) and the need for higher-level languages for more common types of programs are not in conflict. They're complementary. It's the mid-level languages that need to DIAF, because they're not really suited for either and pretending to be more general than they are only encourages people to make choices that hurt them.

Re: Interview with Zig language creator Andrew Kelley [video]

#15

Post by pron »

notacoward wrote: post #13
pron wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who's the "we" who are "stuck"? The vast majority of programmers don't use low-level languages for writing applications even today, but there is a big niche of domains where close to perfect control is needed and that's the domain low level languages like C, C++, Ada, Rust and Zig try to address. I wouldn't (and don't) write "ordinary" applications in those languages, but I don't think the domains they target will ev…

> The vast majority of programmers don't use low-level languages for writing applications I work in a multi-million-line codebase, a significant majority of which is very far from that "need perfect control" domain but is written in a what I'd call a mid-level language - a high-abstraction dialect of C++. So I'd say GP is correct, that too many people are stuck writing code in the wrong language for the task at hand.…

I totally agree, and I think that C++ is exactly this "wrong kind of language," and Rust follows in its footsteps, but I'm sure others disagree. For example, for decades Microsoft has shown an attraction to this kind of languages (they love C++, C# is going down that path, and they're showing interest in Rust), so it might ultimately be a matter of taste -- a personal aesthetic preference -- unless somebody is ever able to make some empirical observations that show an objective benefit to one approach over another.

Re: Interview with Zig language creator Andrew Kelley [video]

#16

Post by flohofwoe »

Kednicma wrote: post #3

I hope that we're not stuck writing piles of low-level code for all eternity. We don't need more than a few pages of each low-level language, and while I do really like Zig's qualities compared to C, I'd still like to minimize the amount of Zig or C total that has to be written. I think that our community's equivalent of "where's my flying car?" is "where's my higher-level language?"

Counterpoint: As long as CPU architectures don't radically change, high-level languages which are too far removed from how CPUs and memory currently work don't make a lot of sense as long as performance (or rather energy efficiency) is a concern. And this should be a much bigger concern than the current status quo. The "free lunch" is long over, we cannot rely on the hardware designers anymore to fix our inefficient high-level code.

Re: Interview with Zig language creator Andrew Kelley [video]

#17

Post by tobz1000 »

Some of Zig's ideas fascinate me, both the great low-level concepts (e.g. arbitrary-sized ints), but much more than that, the high level concepts.

Particularly great is Zig's handling of both macros and generic types, the answer to both of which seems to be: just evaluate them at compile-time with regular functions, no special DSL or extra syntax. Andrew mentions in the video a big drawback of this system - implications for IDE complexity and performance. I imagine the performance side of this could be (maybe is?) mitigated by limiting recursion depth/loop counts for compile-time work.

I'm not particularly interested in taking on a language with manual memory management and the responsibilities it entails, but I would love to have access to Zig's compile-time capabilities, if it were available with some more memory safety.

Re: Interview with Zig language creator Andrew Kelley [video]

#18

Post by notacoward »

logicchains wrote: post #12
notacoward wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's a valid point that needs to be made in this conversation, and it's super-sad that somebody downvoted you for it. I've spent much of my career writing low-level code in low-level languages because I had to, usually in C and usually because I was in resource-constrained environments where tight control over CPU and memory footprints was necessary. There's absolutely room for languages that improve progra…

It'd argue that the constraints of writing lower-level code can actually lead to producing better code. For instance, idiomatic C, Rust and Zig is to pass a buffer into some function, that it then fills, and the caller handles the output. This leads to having more pure, side-effect free functions, compared to the approach some higher-level languages will take of having the function allocate some stuff in its body, pr…

I have a lot of sympathy for that position. The thing that drives me nuts about the codebase I work in now is that it has idioms that involve "promiscuous" memory allocation and then more idioms to fix/cover it up. I'm fine with languages that require completely manual memory allocation (spent most of my career in C). I'm also fine with languages that totally take that burden away. There are tradeoffs either way, but I've seen great code in both of those styles. What I'm not fine with is languages that solve half of the problem and force programmers to learn the brain-dead rules of that half-solution to do their part. STL-heavy C++17 and beyond is, of course, the salient example. I've seen "clever" code in that style, but never great code.

Re: Interview with Zig language creator Andrew Kelley [video]

#19

Post by pjmlp »

pron wrote: post #11
Kednicma wrote: post #3

I hope that we're not stuck writing piles of low-level code for all eternity. We don't need more than a few pages of each low-level language, and while I do really like Zig's qualities compared to C, I'd still like to minimize the amount of Zig or C total that has to be written. I think that our community's equivalent of "where's my flying car?" is "where's my higher-level language?"

Who's the "we" who are "stuck"? The vast majority of programmers don't use low-level languages for writing applications even today, but there is a big niche of domains where close to perfect control is needed and that's the domain low level languages like C, C++, Ada, Rust and Zig try to address. I wouldn't (and don't) write "ordinary" applications in those languages, but I don't think the domains they target will ev…

For me the way to go are languages that go all the way, C++, Ada, Object Pascal, even .NET and Java could fit into it, if the low level story ever gets straight. Currently AOT like .NET Native seems on the right path to achieve it.

Burroughs, Mesa, Modula, Oberon, Interlisp-D,... were on the right path, but in technology not always the best ideas win.

Re: Interview with Zig language creator Andrew Kelley [video]

#20

Post by logicchains »

notacoward wrote: post #18
logicchains wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It'd argue that the constraints of writing lower-level code can actually lead to producing better code. For instance, idiomatic C, Rust and Zig is to pass a buffer into some function, that it then fills, and the caller handles the output. This leads to having more pure, side-effect free functions, compared to the approach some higher-level languages will take of having the function allocate some stuff in its body, pr…

I have a lot of sympathy for that position. The thing that drives me nuts about the codebase I work in now is that it has idioms that involve "promiscuous" memory allocation and then more idioms to fix/cover it up. I'm fine with languages that require completely manual memory allocation (spent most of my career in C). I'm also fine with languages that totally take that burden away. There are tradeoffs either way, but…

>STL-heavy C++17 and beyond is, of course, the salient example. I've seen "clever" code in that style, but never great code.

Maybe the authors of that code just had different priorities, such as maximising compilation time.

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