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Zig is hard but worth it

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Re: Zig is hard but worth it

#181

Post by anon84873628 »

savolai wrote: post #152
zoogeny wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've lately thought that a package manager is as essential to a new language as a standard library. I would also add a LSP and standard code formatter to that list. It is a bit unfortunate because all of the above is a pretty tall order. We're getting to the point that new languages are expected to boil the ocean by the time they reach 1.0

Would love to understand better what exactly is language specific about package managers? You would think a winner would emerge in this space like one has in version control to be used with all languages, just separate repos for different ecosystems?

I was also wondering this. Why does every language need to reinvent the wheel?

Re: Zig is hard but worth it

#182

Post by vineyardmike »

savolai wrote: post #152
zoogeny wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've lately thought that a package manager is as essential to a new language as a standard library. I would also add a LSP and standard code formatter to that list. It is a bit unfortunate because all of the above is a pretty tall order. We're getting to the point that new languages are expected to boil the ocean by the time they reach 1.0

Would love to understand better what exactly is language specific about package managers? You would think a winner would emerge in this space like one has in version control to be used with all languages, just separate repos for different ecosystems?

Different languages do imports differently. There are different constructs for “exports” and modules and namespaces that prevent a common single directory structure.

Pip used to store packages in a global location, now most of python used a Virtual Environment per project.

Node uses a “vendor” directory within the project structure. This is probably the easiest case.

Go used to store everything globally in the “go path” but now with go modules it does something else.

Java doesn’t need source code, just single JAR files, but it needs it within the classpath.

C/++ is very flexible, but varied depending on how you build and set up your project.

Swift/ObjC requires doing whatever apple wants and dealing with their tooling.

Everything is different. If you want “one winner” the closest you get it is the system package manager (of which multiple exist) and pointing your project to its package cache. But not all system package managers handle multiple concurrent versions of the same package.

Maybe one day people will standardize against Nix which seems to be the closest?

Re: Zig is hard but worth it

#183

Post by Conscat »

flohofwoe wrote: post #93
jsheard wrote: post #7

I get what Zig is going for in making all operations as explicit as possible, but I fear that it's going to turn away fields like graphics and game development where it would be a good fit except for the lack of operator overloading forcing you to go back to C-style math function spaghetti. It's all fun and games until what should be a straightforward math expression turns into 8 nested function calls.

Zig has a builtin @Vector type that might come in handy for most cases where in C++ a math library with operator overloading would be used: https://www.godbolt.org/z/7zbxnncv6 ...maybe one day there will also be a @Matrix builtin.

It's a LOT worse than C++ SIMD libraries.

In C++ (EVE, Vc, Highway, xsimd, stdlib), you can specify the ABI of a vector, which allows you to make platform specific optimizations in multifunctions. Or you can write vector code of a lowest-common-denominator width (like 16 bytes, rather than specifying the number of lanes), which runs the same on NEON and SSE2. Or you can write SIMD that is automatically natively optimized for just a single platform. These features are available on every notable C++ SIMD library, and they're basically indispensable for serious performance code.

Re: Zig is hard but worth it

#184

Post by Conscat »

haberman wrote: post #119
rayiner wrote: post #37

Alternative languages are cool, but I struggle to see the point of a systems programming language that doesn't offer static memory safety in 2023. Rust isn't necessarily the best and final answer--it seems like there is a broad design space to explore for memory-safe systems programming languages. But Zig seems to occupy the same local maximum as C--a relatively simple, non-safe systems language--and doesn't have a k…

The killer feature of Zig IMO is comptime. C++ has spent over a decade now marching towards making more and more of the language available at compile time, but in an awkward and complicated way (constexpr, consteval, constinit). Zig comes out of the gate with a unified and coherent compile-time evaluation feature that effectively obsoletes not only constexpr/consteval/constinit, but C++ templates too. This is "doing…

Zig does not have anything analogous to constinit, because Zig does not have object lifetimes or constructors. Comptime is also a massive pain to use for generating new data types (you have to return a type from a comptime function), and it cannot express anything analogous to CRTP.

Re: Zig is hard but worth it

#185

Post by cmbothwell »

flohofwoe wrote: post #133
throwawaymaths wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably not. @Vector is not a mathematical vector, it's SIMD. it makes sense because there are times when those live in registers and a poly fill for stack memory isn't burdensome. @Matrix makes less sense because when it gets big, where are you getting memory from?

For 'game-ey' math code, a matrix is at most 4x4 floats (64 bytes), that's fine for a value type that might live on the stack. vec2..4 and matching matrix types up to 4x4 is basically also what's provided in GPU shading languages as primitive types, and personally I would prefer such a set of "SIMD-y" primitive types for Zig (maybe a bit more luxurious than @Vector, e.g. with things like component swizzling syntax -…

You might like Odin, it has a similar philosophy to Zig and supports swizzling:

https://odin-lang.org/docs/overview/#swizzle-operations

Matrix types are also built in:

https://odin-lang.org/docs/overview/#matrix-type

I’ve thought for a little while that Odin could be a secret weapon for game dev and similar pieces of software.

Re: Zig is hard but worth it

#186

Post by eatonphil »

ok123456 wrote: post #87

One annoying thing I ran into when trying zig is they don't distribute debs any more for Debian distributions. They just tell you to use a snap. I don't have snap, and don't want it. Compiling it requires the latest llvm toolchian (16), which is only realistically going to be available as a package if you're on a bleeding edge distribution.

What's wrong with downloading the binary? curl + mv + chown should do it?

Re: Zig is hard but worth it

#187

Post by kprotty »

flohofwoe wrote: post #116
Taywee wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd rather use explicit function calls for all linear algebra and geometry operations? I don't think adding two vectors using an overloaded + is that spooky or distant.

FWIW Zig can do that without operator overloading: https://www.godbolt.org/z/7zbxnncv6

Vectors in Zig are SIMD types. Vectors in games are probably algebraic types. Using SIMD for the latter may not be that useful if 1) specific elements are accessed frequently 2) transformations involve a different operation happen on each element.

Re: Zig is hard but worth it

#189

Post by seba_dos1 »

gen220 wrote: post #154
johnnyjeans wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. I actively avoid languages that rely on package managers simply because they only give the illusion of being beneficial. It ends up being more boilerplate I have to learn to use an ecosystem, because they don't actually solve dependency hell and now there's a whole additional complicated tool with its own DSL I have to contend with in order to fix what's broken (or even diagnose issues.) The more peripher…

Just curious, not snide: what language fits this criteria? C/C++? Using Python 3.7+ in a way that completely ignores Pip, because the stdlib is now quite expansive?

Python is quite often being used without pip, as the modules are often packaged by distros already (and in many distros they have to be packaged this way in order to include the application that uses them in the repos).

Re: Zig is hard but worth it

#190

Post by sarchertech »

mr_00ff00 wrote: post #167
truckerbill wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want to invest in Odin but I see the velocity and growing mindshare that Zig has and I wonder if it's not better to settle for that. Also how do you find the compile times?

Just looked at Odin and I really like the syntax, but I feel the same way. I feel like the community and ecosystem is the key elements and zig seems to be headed in the direction to grab that.

They’re very different languages despite having some similar capabilities.

I also found the game dev libraries in Odin far easier to use then the ones in zig.

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