41–50 of 159 posts
> By default, variables are mutable. You can enable Immutable by Default mode using a directive.
> //> immutable-by-default
> var x = 10; > // x = 20; // Error: x is immutable
> var mut y = 10; > y = 20; // OK
Wait, but this means that if I’m reading somebody’s code, I won’t know if variables are mutable or not unless I read the whole file looking for such directive. Imagine if someone even defined custom directives, that doesn’t make it readable.
An interesting bit to me is that it compiles to (apparently) readable C, I'm not sure how one would use that to their advantage I am not too familiar with C - is the idea that it's easier to incrementally have some parts of your codebase in this language, with other parts being in regular C?
another is that it only has C runtime requirement, so no weird runtime stuff to impelement if youd say want to run on bare metal..you could output the C code and compile it to your target.
Initial commit was 24h ago, 363 stars, 20 forks already. Man, this goes fast.
So, the point of this language is to be able to write code with high productivity, but with the benefit of compiling it to a low level language? Overall it seems like the language repeats what ZIG does, including the C ABI support, manual memory management with additional ergonomics, comptime feature. The biggest difference that comes to mind quickly is that the creator of Zen-C states that it can allow for the produ…
fn main() {
comptime {
var N = 20;
var fib: long[20];
fib[0] = (long)0;
fib[1] = (long)1;
for var i=2; iThe Zig equivalent of the above comptime block just be:
const fibs = comptime blk: {
var f: [20]u64 = undefined;
f[0] = 0;
f[1] = 1;
for (2..f.len) |i| {
f[i] = f[i-1] + f[i-2];
}
break :blk f;
};
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Assembly requires way more work than compiling to, say C. Clang and gcc do a lot of the heavy lifting regarding optimisation, spilling values to the stack, etc
Then you're stuck with the C stack, though, and no way to collect garbage.
So, the point of this language is to be able to write code with high productivity, but with the benefit of compiling it to a low level language? Overall it seems like the language repeats what ZIG does, including the C ABI support, manual memory management with additional ergonomics, comptime feature. The biggest difference that comes to mind quickly is that the creator of Zen-C states that it can allow for the produ…
> Mutability > By default, variables are mutable. You can enable Immutable by Default mode using a directive. > //> immutable-by-default > var x = 10; > // x = 20; // Error: x is immutable > var mut y = 10; > y = 20; // OK Wait, but this means that if I’m reading somebody’s code, I won’t know if variables are mutable or not unless I read the whole file looking for such directive. Imagine if someone even defined custo…
For some niches the answer is "because the convenience is worth it" (e.g. game jams). But I personally think the error prone option should be opt in for such cases.
Or to be blunt: correctness should not be opt-in. It should be opt-out.
I have considered such a flag for my future language, which I named #explode-randomly-at-runtime ;)