Earlier quoted context omitted.
Zig is too uninteresting to eclipse anything. It's the same problem as D's -betterC option. It's not better-enough to motivate switching away from C in places where C is still used, and it's far too stripped down & basic to attract the majority that's gone to C++, Rust, Go, ObjC, or Swift (or even "full" D). It doesn't offer much to justify switching costs. If C++11 had never happened then maybe Zig would attract the…
I share your view partially. As you said, code generation is difficult and it can get messy pretty fast, but this is the beauty of Zig, you have these features tightly packed, there is a capped number of ways for doing things. In Zig you learn how to use the wand properly, instead of being distracted by trying different sizes and colors of wands. While many languages focus on the breadth of ways of doing things, Zig…
I can only speak for Go, not Zig at all, but not giving me the "wand colors" meant that when i still needed colors to solve my problems, i had to invent them myself. .. okay this analogy breaks down there, but yea. The need for basic things like iterators, enums, and sometimes even generics didn't go away in Go. They didn't stop being extremely useful patterns or abstractions. They're just missing.
So what do you do with something that is still useful, possibly needed, but missing? You reinvent it. Very basic behavior like Iterators, Maps, etc become separated by piles of functions spread out all over the page. Yea, it's all simple - no complex features, but also no way to express that logic tightly, quick to reason about. Go wears down your scroll wheel in my experience (~5 years).
Would i have the same complaints about Zig? Your comment leaves me feeling like i would.