Partially Matching Zig Enums

Post by rowanG077 » Sat, Aug 09, 2025, 2:23 PM UTC

pron wrote: post #34

tialaramex wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

C++ already illustrates this idea you're talking about and we know exactly where this goes. Rust's false positives are annoying, so programmers are encouraged to further improve the borrowck and language features to reduce them. But the C++ or Zig false negatives just means your program malfunctions in unspecified ways and you may not even notice, so programmers are encouraged to introduce more and more such cases to…

> C++ already illustrates this idea you're talking about and we know exactly where this goes. No, it doesn't. Zig is safer than C++ (and it's much simpler, which also has an effect on correctness). Making up some binary distinction and then deciding that because C++ falls on the same side of it as Zig (except it doesn't, because Zig eliminates out-of-bounds access to the same degree as Rust, not C++) then what applie…

Post by munchler » Sat, Aug 09, 2025, 2:27 PM UTC

Sytten wrote: post #20

chrismorgan wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I’ve seen isn’t people disregarding Zig because it’s just another memory-unsafe language, but rather disqualifying Zig because it’s memory-unsafe, and they don’t want to deal with that, even if some other aspects of the language are rather interesting and compelling. But once you’re sold on memory safety, it’s hard to go back.

This is really the crust of the argument. I absolutely love the Rust compiler for example, going back to Zig would feel a regression to me. There is a whole class of bugs that my brain now assumes the compiler will handle for me.

Post by the__alchemist » Sat, Aug 09, 2025, 2:30 PM UTC

conorbergin wrote: post #35

Sytten wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is really the crust of the argument. I absolutely love the Rust compiler for example, going back to Zig would feel a regression to me. There is a whole class of bugs that my brain now assumes the compiler will handle for me.

I think the problem with this attitude is the compiler becomes a middle manager you have to appease rather than a collaborator. Certainly there are advantages to having a manager, but if you go off the beaten track with Rust, you will not have a good time. I write most of my code in Zig these days and I think being able to segfault is a small price to pay to never have to see `Arc >>` again.

Post by ViewTrick1002 » Sat, Aug 09, 2025, 2:40 PM UTC

conorbergin wrote: post #35

Sytten wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is really the crust of the argument. I absolutely love the Rust compiler for example, going back to Zig would feel a regression to me. There is a whole class of bugs that my brain now assumes the compiler will handle for me.

I think the problem with this attitude is the compiler becomes a middle manager you have to appease rather than a collaborator. Certainly there are advantages to having a manager, but if you go off the beaten track with Rust, you will not have a good time. I write most of my code in Zig these days and I think being able to segfault is a small price to pay to never have to see `Arc >>` again.

Post by surajrmal » Sat, Aug 09, 2025, 2:48 PM UTC

judofyr wrote: post #7

This is one the reasons I find it so silly when people disregard Zig «because it’s just another memory unsafe language»: There’s plenty of innovation within Zig, especially related to comptime and metaprogramming. I really hope other languages are paying attention and steals some of these ideas. «inline else» is also very powerful tool to easily abstract away code with no runtime cost.