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Zig: A new direction for low-level programming?

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101–110 of 110 posts

Re: Zig: A new direction for low-level programming?

#101

> the language motto is “No hidden control flow”. Oh man, I wish the Haskell crowd gave at the very least lip service to that type of idea.

If you like that idea you might like my library Bluefin, where even throwing exceptions requires an explicit value telling you where control will return to.

https://hackage.haskell.org/package/bluefin

Re: Zig: A new direction for low-level programming?

#102
post #86
post #33

Because we rarely have objective measures by which to compare programming languages, there is no such thing as "ideal." Some objective measures can include code size, and it is undoubtedly true that switching from Assembly to Python often results in a super-linear reduction in code size, but we rarely see such differences anymore. When we do get some objective comparisons through empirical research -- always many yea…

> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43939520 Hi pron, I am hoping you could write your thoughts on Odin.

I haven't seen anything particularly unusual/novel/interesting in Odin that would draw me to take a closer look. Same goes for Jai. That's not to say that these languages aren't well-designed, but I didn't find some interesting overarching design philosophy that would draw my curiosity. Of course, I could be missing something.

There are some very successful uninteresting languages (Python and C# come to mind), but they don't give you much to think or talk about other than, perhaps, a particular interesting feature here or there. Again, that's not to say they're badly designed or don't deserve their popularity.

Re: Zig: A new direction for low-level programming?

#103
post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see. That might be what's happened, then.

Name and shame the anti-malware vendor you/your company is using, so that I will avoid them.

I don't know for sure, but I can tell you that this isn't a company, but a university, and based on a press release from a couple years ago, I'm pretty sure they use OnSystem Defender. This might not be their fault, though; it might be that the school itself blocked all .cc domains using their own firewall rules.

Re: Zig: A new direction for low-level programming?

#105

I've been closely following and evaluating the train of C replacement languages that was (I believe) started by Jonathan Blow and Jai. Zig is one of the strong contenders, but Odin is IMO following a saner path, Carbon and D should be mentioned and I think there are a few others. My initial reaction to new programming languages is naturally skeptical, but I really liked the way the designers behind those efforts appr…

Odin just hasn't been in the same league performance wise as rust, c, c++, zig. For these types of languages it's important.

Re: Zig: A new direction for low-level programming?

#106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the problems they try to solve are not painful enough. The lack of safety is not painful enough? There is an entire industry (i.e. job sector, training, expertise) that evolved to try to thwart bad actors abusing unsafe languages.

But neither Zig nor Odin solve this problem. The only serious attempt is Rust.

Rust is super heavy handed in how it does it.

Re: Zig: A new direction for low-level programming?

#107
post #3

Instinctually I’m bothered by passing an allocator to everything. LISP’s dynamic variables spring to mind. One could set an arena allocator at the top of a loop in a dynamic variable and then everything inside the loop would use that allocator. The bottom of the loop could free everything. Although I do really like knowing if something might call an allocator, perhaps a function specifier to indicate it allocates. Al…

That might violate the no implied behavior rule that zig has.

Re: Zig: A new direction for low-level programming?

#108
post #33

Because we rarely have objective measures by which to compare programming languages, there is no such thing as "ideal." Some objective measures can include code size, and it is undoubtedly true that switching from Assembly to Python often results in a super-linear reduction in code size, but we rarely see such differences anymore. When we do get some objective comparisons through empirical research -- always many yea…

We can always dream about the unicorn language. In my opinion zig is the closest I've seen. Simple and orthogonal yet brilliantly extensible with its comptime. But it's not without its warts. And it doesn't annoy me like Rust seems to. (long time c++ programmer here who is weary of the ever growing complexities).

Re: Zig: A new direction for low-level programming?

#110
The full list of articles:

Jai: https://bitshifters.cc/2025/04/28/jai.html

Odin: https://bitshifters.cc/2025/05/04/odin.html

Zig: https://bitshifters.cc/2025/05/04/zig.html

V: https://bitshifters.cc/2025/05/17/vlang.html

C3: https://bitshifters.cc/2025/05/22/c3-c-tradition.html

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