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Why is Zig so cool?

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Re: Why is Zig so cool?

#181

Post by rurban »

WalterBright wrote: post #150
unscaled wrote: post #93

I'm afraid this article kinda fails at at its job. It starts out with a very bold claim ("Zig is not only a new programming language, but it’s a totally new way to write programs"), but ends up listing a bunch of features that are not unique to Zig or even introduced by Zig: type inference (Invented in the late 60s, first practically implemented in the 80s), anonymous structs (C#, Go, Typescript, many ML-style langua…

D has had compile time function execution since 2007 or so. https://dlang.org/spec/function.html#interpretation It doesn't need a keyword to trigger it. Any expression that is a const-expression in the grammar triggers it.

Perl5 had it before. Either by constant-folding, or by BEGIN blocks.

Constant-folding just got watered down by the many dynamic evangelists in the decades after, that even C or C++ didn't enforce it properly. In perl5 is was watered down on add (+) by some hilariously wrong argumentation then. So you could precompute mult const expressions, but not add.

Re: Why is Zig so cool?

#183

Post by bvrmn »

mk89 wrote: post #153

Some days ago I decided to look at Zig a bit more in detail. So I skipped the usual marketing and I checked why it could be an alternative to C or Rust. Could it be? It seems that (debug) allocators are a nice idea, however, it seems that they exist "somehow" already for C, so I wonder: why would you pick this language for your next low level program? They provide runtime checks, so you need thorough testing before y…

Slices and UB-explicitness are quite nice comparing to C. Makes head free to think about really important things.

Re: Why is Zig so cool?

#184

Post by cyber1 »

The biggest advantages of Zig for me are that everything is explicit (no hidden features like overloads or implicit conversions) and that its metaprogramming is powerful, easy to use, and easy to understand.

Re: Why is Zig so cool?

#185

Post by johnisgood »

the__alchemist wrote: post #41
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

For anyone not familiar: You can bundle arbitrary software as Python wheels. Can be convenient in cases like this!

What "cases" are those? Tell me one useful and neat case. Why is it useful and neat, you think?

Re: Why is Zig so cool?

#186

Post by smj-edison »

sho_hn wrote: post #121
jandrewrogers wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would highlight `std::launder` as an example. It was added in C++17. Famously, most people have no idea what it is used for or why it exists. For low-level systems it was a godsend because there wasn’t an official way to express the intent, though compilers left backdoors open because some things require it. It generates no code, it is a compiler barrier related to constant folding and lifetime analysis that is par…

This is a good example because I'm familiar with it (I'm a C++ programmer; I haven't had occasion to use `launder`, but I read about it back then). But what's the Zig equivalent?

One thing that I've found really useful is being able to annotate o pointer's alignment. I'm working on an interpreter, and I'm using tagged pointers (6 bits), so the data structure needs to have 128 byte alignment. I can define a function like `fn toInt(ptr: *align(128) LongString) u56` and the compiler will track and enforce the alignment.

You might also find some of the builtin functions interesting as well[1], they have a lot of really useful functions that in other languages are only accessible via the blessed stdlib, such as @addrSpaceCast, @atomicLoad, @branchHint, @fieldParentPtr, @frameAddress, @prefetch, @returnAddress(), and more.

[1] https://ziglang.org/documentation/master/#Builtin-Functions

Re: Why is Zig so cool?

#187

Post by brabel »

WalterBright wrote: post #150
unscaled wrote: post #93

I'm afraid this article kinda fails at at its job. It starts out with a very bold claim ("Zig is not only a new programming language, but it’s a totally new way to write programs"), but ends up listing a bunch of features that are not unique to Zig or even introduced by Zig: type inference (Invented in the late 60s, first practically implemented in the 80s), anonymous structs (C#, Go, Typescript, many ML-style langua…

D has had compile time function execution since 2007 or so. https://dlang.org/spec/function.html#interpretation It doesn't need a keyword to trigger it. Any expression that is a const-expression in the grammar triggers it.

Yes and D's comptime is much more fun, IMHO than Zig's! Yet everyone talks about Zig's comptime as if it were unique or new.

Re: Why is Zig so cool?

#188

Post by zozbot234 »

chrisco255 wrote: post #164
jibal wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zig's generics cause bloat just like any other language with generics--explicit flow control has nothing to do with it. Zig is a good language. So are Rust, D, Nim, and a bunch of others. People tend to think that the ones they know about are better than all the rest because they don't know about the rest and are implicitly or explicitly comparing their language to C.

Zig's generics can potentially, but not necessarily, because Zig's generics are explicitly controlled through comptime functions, which give the developer a ton of control of how the generic code is unrolled. They're also frequently less used in general than Rust generics. Of course both Zig and Rust are good languages. But my experience, and I believe your experience will be too if you try to compile programs of sim…

Rust has macros that allow for arbitrary compile-time generated code, just like Zig. Most Rust-compiled programs are a bit bloated because libstd is statically linked and not rebuilt from scratch with a project-specific trimmed feature set, which leads to potentially unwanted code being included for e.g. recoverable panics, backtraces, UTF-8 string handling etc. A set of new RFC's is being worked on that may at some point allow libstd to be rebuilt from scratch within Stable Rust projects, with well-defined, stable, subsetted features.

Re: Why is Zig so cool?

#189

Post by johnisgood »

phplovesong wrote: post #112
unscaled wrote: post #93

I'm afraid this article kinda fails at at its job. It starts out with a very bold claim ("Zig is not only a new programming language, but it’s a totally new way to write programs"), but ends up listing a bunch of features that are not unique to Zig or even introduced by Zig: type inference (Invented in the late 60s, first practically implemented in the 80s), anonymous structs (C#, Go, Typescript, many ML-style langua…

Agreed. But i would not put comptime as some sort of magical invention. Its still just a newish take on meta programming. We had that since forever. From my minimal time with Zig i kind of think comptime as a better version of c++ templates. That said Zig is possibly a better alternative to c++, but not that exiting for me. I kind of dont get why so many think its the holy grail, first it was rust, and now zig.

As much as I dislike Rust, I gotta give it credit where it's due. It has something unique: a borrow checker. What is so unique in Zig?

Re: Why is Zig so cool?

#190

Post by brabel »

jamiejquinn wrote: post #171

The article's claim of Zig being a "totally new way to write programs" is quite mad but I'd like to make a different claim: Zig's own development is a totally new way of writing programming languages (or is at least very rare). While I don't wholly agree with all choices made by Andrew and the Zig team, I greatly appreciate the care with which they develop features. The slow pace of deliberating over features, refini…

It seems pretty common to me?! Java is developed that way. So is Rust. And many others. What exactly do you see as different in Zig?
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