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Why is Zig so cool?

nilostolte.github.io

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Re: Why is Zig so cool?

#31

Post by yoyohello13 »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #30
simonw wrote: post #8

A neat little thing I like about Zig is one of the options for installing it is via PyPI like this: https://pypi.org/project/ziglang/ pip install ziglang Which means you don't even have to install it separately to try it out via uvx. If you have uv installed already try this: cd /tmp echo '#include int main() { printf("Hello, World!"); return 0; }' > hello.c uvx --from ziglang python-zig cc /tmp/hello.c ./a.out

That's really cool actually. Now that AI is a little more commonly available for developer tooling I feel like its easier than ever to learn any programming language since you can braindrain the model.

The standard models are pretty bad a zig right now since the language is so new and changes so fast. The entire language spec is available in one html file though so you can have a little better success feeding that for context.

Re: Why is Zig so cool?

#33

Post by andai »

badtuple wrote: post #23
pyrolistical wrote: post #13

I totally vibe with the intro but then the rest of the article goes on to be a showcase bits of zig. I feel what is missing is how each feature is so cool compared to other languages. As a language nerd zig syntax is just so cool. It doesn’t feel the need to adhere to any conventions and seems to solve the problems in the most direct and simple way. An example of this declaring a label and referring to a label. By mo…

I was also curious what direction the article was going to take. The showcase is cool, and the features you mentioned are cool. But for me, Zig is cool is because all the pieces simply fit together with essentially no redundancy or overloading. You learn the constructs and they just compose as you expect. There's one feature I'd personally like added, but there's nothing actually _missing_. Coding in it quickly felt…

Yeah, the real strength of Zig isn't what's there, but what isn't.

Re: Why is Zig so cool?

#34

Post by andai »

rvrb wrote: post #18

I've tried writing a similar post, but I think it's a bit difficult to sound convincing when talking about why Zig is so pleasant. it's really not any one thing. it's a culmination of a lot of well made, pragmatic decisions that don't sound significant on their own. they just culminate in a development experience that feels pleasantly unique. a few of those decisions seem radical, and I often disagreed with them.. bu…

+1 for Odin. I wrote a little game in it last year and found it delightful.

Re: Why is Zig so cool?

#35

Post by andyferris »

pron wrote: post #6

> I can’t think of any other language in my 45 years long career that surprised more than Zig. I can say the same (although my career spans only 30 years), or, more accurately, that it's one of the few languages that surprised me most. Coming to it from a language design perspective, what surprised me is just how far partial evaluation can be taken. While strictly weaker than AST macros in expressive power (macros ar…

I agree.

I look forward to a future high-level language that uses something like comptime for metaprogramming/interfaces/etc, is strongly typed, but lets you write scripts as easily as python or javascript.

Re: Why is Zig so cool?

#36

Post by pron »

andyferris wrote: post #35
pron wrote: post #6

> I can’t think of any other language in my 45 years long career that surprised more than Zig. I can say the same (although my career spans only 30 years), or, more accurately, that it's one of the few languages that surprised me most. Coming to it from a language design perspective, what surprised me is just how far partial evaluation can be taken. While strictly weaker than AST macros in expressive power (macros ar…

I agree. I look forward to a future high-level language that uses something like comptime for metaprogramming/interfaces/etc, is strongly typed, but lets you write scripts as easily as python or javascript.

Thing is, having a good JIT gives you the performance of partial evaluation pretty much automatically (at the cost of less predictability), as compilation occurs at runtime, so the distinction between compile-time and runtime largely disappears. E.g., in Java, a reflective call will eventually be compiled by the JIT into a direct call; virtual dispatch will also be compiled into direct dispatch or even inlined (when appropriate) etc..

Re: Why is Zig so cool?

#37

Post by elcritch »

andyferris wrote: post #35
pron wrote: post #6

> I can’t think of any other language in my 45 years long career that surprised more than Zig. I can say the same (although my career spans only 30 years), or, more accurately, that it's one of the few languages that surprised me most. Coming to it from a language design perspective, what surprised me is just how far partial evaluation can be taken. While strictly weaker than AST macros in expressive power (macros ar…

I agree. I look forward to a future high-level language that uses something like comptime for metaprogramming/interfaces/etc, is strongly typed, but lets you write scripts as easily as python or javascript.

Tryout Nim, it has powerful comptime/metaprogramming, statically typed, automatic memory management and is as easy to program as python or javascript while still allowing low level stuff.

For me it'd be hard to go back to languages that don't have all that. Only swift comes close.

Re: Why is Zig so cool?

#38

Post by robotresearcher »

> Probably the most incredible virtue of Zig compiler is its ability to compile C code. This associated with the ability to cross-compile code to be run in another architecture, different than the machine where it is was originally compiled, is already something quite different and unique.

Isn't cross compilation very, very ordinary? Inline C is cool, like C has inline ASM (for the target arch). But cross-compiling? If you built a phone app on your computer you did that as a matter of course, and there are many other common use cases.

Re: Why is Zig so cool?

#39

Post by crest »

robotresearcher wrote: post #38

> Probably the most incredible virtue of Zig compiler is its ability to compile C code. This associated with the ability to cross-compile code to be run in another architecture, different than the machine where it is was originally compiled, is already something quite different and unique. Isn't cross compilation very, very ordinary? Inline C is cool, like C has inline ASM (for the target arch). But cross-compiling?…

> Isn't cross compilation very, very ordinary?

Working cross compilation out of the box any-to-any still isn't.

Re: Why is Zig so cool?

#40

Post by bsder »

ForHackernews wrote: post #2

> I can’t think of any other language in my 45 years long career that surprised more than Zig. I can easily say that Zig is not only a new programming language, but it’s a totally new way to write programs, in my opinion. To say it’s merely a language to replace C or C++, it’s a huge understatement. I don't understand how the things presented in this article are surprising. Zig has several nice features shared by man…

Winning at chess is more "avoid gigantic blunders" than "make brilliant moves".

Zig feels like one of the few programming languages that mostly just avoids gigantic blunders.

I have some beefs with some decisions, but none of them that are an immutable failure mode that couldn't be fixed in a straightforward manner.

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