Earlier quoted context omitted.
Had you heard of Perl 6?
Perl I used in 2008 or so but not since. Haven't come across Perl 6.
Perl 6 = Raku.
Why is Zig so cool?
191–200 of 527 posts
Re: Why is Zig so cool?
#192I'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…
The code samples are so weird... Some are images, others are not, and there's like 10 different color schemes (even among the textual ones, it's not consistent). That actually takes some kind of effort to achieve :D.
Re: Why is Zig so cool?
#193I'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…
When I read "I can easily say that Zig is not only a new programming language, but it’s a totally new way to write programs" I expected to see something as shocking as LISP/Smalltalk/Realtalk/EVE/FORTH/Prolog... A whole new paradigm, a whole new way to program. Or at least a new concept like the pure functionalism of Haskell, or Prototyping like in Lua/JS/Io. And I was so damn shocked how I must have missed something so huge, having read the entirety of Zig's documentation and not have noticed anything? As you mentioned, turned out nothing, and I was shocked then why is it in the top of HN? Also turned out for no reason based on the comments.
Re: Why is Zig so cool?
#194I'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…
The code samples are so weird... Some are images, others are not, and there's like 10 different color schemes (even among the textual ones, it's not consistent). That actually takes some kind of effort to achieve :D.
gives you a preview of the experience of using it :)
Re: Why is Zig so cool?
#195> Zig for ( 0..9 ) |i| { } > C for (i = 0; i I know an open interval [0..9) makes sense in many cases, but it's counterintuitive and I often forget whether it includes the last value or not. It's the same for python's range(0, 9).
I completely agree. One of Zig's big competitors, Odin, has a more explicit syntax for this where `0..<5` is an open interval and `0...5` is closed.
I think that comes from Ruby, right? I know Groovy is inspired by Ruby and has exactly the same syntax.
EDIT: oh just noticed it's 3 dots in the close case... in Groovy it's just 2.
Re: Why is Zig so cool?
#196The 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?
I don’t think Java and Rust were so ok with completely removing features. For example, in Zig 0.15 they completely overhauled the io, meaning all libraries now have to rewrite up usage. Just to make sure they did it right
Re: Why is Zig so cool?
#197I'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.
I prefer Odin to Zig after trying both... but it seems Odin's performance is a bit lower than Zig, C and Rust?! Have you noticed any performance issues or it's not something to worry about?
Re: Why is Zig so cool?
#198The 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?
Java and Rust have surpassed 1.0 version a long time ago, so they don’t remove features left and right on each feature release.
Not that it’s a bad thing. Python removes stuff, and it takes time to upgrade to new versions.
Re: Why is Zig so cool?
#199I'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…
> C/C++
No such thing. Also C++ has most of those features too.
Re: Why is Zig so cool?
#200I like the idea of the `defer `keyword - you can have automatic cleanup at the end of the scope but you have to make it obvious you are doing so, no hidden execution of anything (unlike c++ destructors).
I would like a language to support both defer and C++ style destructors / Rust Drop. There are good use-cases for having both. For things like a mutex or straight-forward resource cleanup - having a bunch of brain-dead defer statements adds little value and only bloats unnecessary line count. Let the resource type handle its own release/cleanup at scope close. Code is made sweet, succinct and safe.
In Rust, there’s a drop guard pattern to do this, which leverages the lazy execution of closure, checkout the scopeguard crate. C++ should be easy to do that too I think