161–170 of 429 posts
Why would anyone use a new systems programming language that is not safe? Zig might be better than C in some aspects, but is it worth it to switch to Zig when you realize that it's not much safer than C? [0] [0]: https://www.scattered-thoughts.net/writing/how-safe-is-zig/
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if we can do 1 + 1, we should be able to do vec2 + vec2, same with mat4 * mat4 Odin proved it that it can be made efficiently while keeping sanity
> if we can do 1 + 1, we should be able to do vec2 + vec2, same with mat4 * mat4 why? operator overloading doesn't help you solve any problems. you can have the readability with methods which are named appropriately. operator overloading seems so powerful and useful until you realize one day that it only changes the appearance of things, and makes no difference whatsoever to anything you are actually doing.
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> This really irritated me when I started working with go, but it stopped bothering me and now I even mostly like it. Don’t get me wrong I like a good unused code warning . What frustrates me is that Go’s is dumb / unreliable, and it will stop you from working entirely until you’ve complied with this whim, which has a fraction of a percent chance of identifying a real bug. > Basically writing go without `staticcheck`…
So you don't publish it. I guess they could have levels and allow them in debug mode or with special flag or something?
I tried Zig recently but I found the unsilenceable lints to be a huge productivity killer. I actually posted a link to the GitHub issue this morning. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32751317 This makes a normal workflow with `watchexec zig test` basically impossible, since before I can even run the tests I have to spend time hunting down which variables are used/unused at the moment and (un)commenting them. And…
You and me both, in fact I made my voice heard in the Github issue. What's damning is how much Stockholm Syndrome there is around this feature, with people saying it's no big deal and it helps catch bugs. It's more annoying than helpful, and it catches a very small amount of corner cases, while completely killing productivity. And you know what's the reasoning behind this? "Zig doesn't have warnings." As if it's a ma…
Why would anyone use a new systems programming language that is not safe? Zig might be better than C in some aspects, but is it worth it to switch to Zig when you realize that it's not much safer than C? [0] [0]: https://www.scattered-thoughts.net/writing/how-safe-is-zig/
It does seem confusing to me why someone would choose Zig. If you’re looking for a low-level language, Rust is safer with a better ecosystem. If you want a high-level language, Nim binaries are smaller and the Go ecosystem is better. When is Zig the best choice?
"Freestanding" targets, perhaps?
I often write software in C to run directly on microcontrollers; no OS, no runtime.
I can see the advantage freestanding Rust would provide for e.g. 802.11 firmware. Broadcom repeatedly suffers from their choice to write the firmware for their WiFi chips in C.
… but would Rust provide any clear advantage to the programmers of a Furby or a keyboard controller?
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Realistically, you probably shouldn't. Zig seems to be positioning itself as a systems-level language—more of an alternative to C/C++/Rust than to Python/Go. If you're building low-level, high-performance software, it might be interesting to you; otherwise, I don't see a practical benefit.
> Python/Go I wouldn't put those two languages in the same class. Go has about the performance of Java/C# with about the memory usage of C++. It's much closer in performance and resource efficiency to those languages than it is from a scripting language like Python.
I really wish Zig had closures and interfaces/traits. You can emulate them in hackish ways, but UX is awful and as there isn't a uniform way, there's next to no compatibility with regards to libraries. As is I'd rather just use a heavily restricted version of C++.
> It’s a very appealing language to the modern low-end (and not only) applications Current $work language is Go, which is so painful to use. I often look wistfully at all of Zig's features that improve on what Go does (particularly with regard to error handling). I hope in the future I can use Zig as a Go replacement and not just a C/C++ replacement.
I've only scratched the surface of Zig myself, but my impression is that replacing Go with Zig will probably be painful in most cases. I think of the stereotypical Go project as a backend API service, where memory is relatively plentiful, and "make a copy of this string" is something you do all the time without thinking twice about it. It seems like Zig wants you to be more thoughtful whenever you're allocating memory, which makes a ton of sense for low level libraries or kernel code, but which sounds painful for typical large applications.
I tried Zig recently but I found the unsilenceable lints to be a huge productivity killer. I actually posted a link to the GitHub issue this morning. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32751317 This makes a normal workflow with `watchexec zig test` basically impossible, since before I can even run the tests I have to spend time hunting down which variables are used/unused at the moment and (un)commenting them. And…
You and me both, in fact I made my voice heard in the Github issue. What's damning is how much Stockholm Syndrome there is around this feature, with people saying it's no big deal and it helps catch bugs. It's more annoying than helpful, and it catches a very small amount of corner cases, while completely killing productivity. And you know what's the reasoning behind this? "Zig doesn't have warnings." As if it's a ma…
Setting aside the unused variables issue for a moment, you might want to take a moment to ponder the fact that not having warning messages is an explicit design choice, not a missing feature.
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You and me both, in fact I made my voice heard in the Github issue. What's damning is how much Stockholm Syndrome there is around this feature, with people saying it's no big deal and it helps catch bugs. It's more annoying than helpful, and it catches a very small amount of corner cases, while completely killing productivity. And you know what's the reasoning behind this? "Zig doesn't have warnings." As if it's a ma…
So don't use Zig? I don't get why you're so angry about something someone else likes. Just don't use it or look at it! So easy...