Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Type resolution redesign, with language changes to taste

ziglang.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 284 posts

Re: Type resolution redesign, with language changes to taste

#61

Post by ChrisGreenHeur »

munificent wrote: post #46
fouronnes3 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mindshare death is a very large overstatement given the massive amount of legacy C++ out there that will be maintained by poor souls for year to come. But you are right, there used to be a great language hiding within C++ if the committee ever dared to break backwards compat. But even if they did it now it would be too late and they'd just end up with a worse Rust or Zig.

The biggest problem with C++ is that while everyone agrees there is a great language hiding in it, everyone also has a remarkably different idea of what that great language actually is.

There are multiple great languages hiding within it

Re: Type resolution redesign, with language changes to taste

#62

Post by lionkor »

ryanxsim wrote: post #55
kprotty wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've worked on two "production" zig codebases: tigerbeetle [0] and sig [1]. These larger zig projects will stick to a tagged release (which doesn't change), and upgrade to newly tagged releases, usually a few days or months after they come out. The upgrade itself takes like a week, depending on the amount of changes to be done. These projects also tend to not use other zig dependencies. [0]: https://github.com/tigerb…

I really wanted to deep dive into zig but I'm into rust now kinda late as I'm really just started like 2024. Have you tried rust? how does it compared to zig? * just asking

Zig is a modern C,

Rust is a modern C++/OCaml

So if you enjoy C++, Rust is for you. If you enjoy C and wish it was more verbose and more modern, try Zig.

Re: Type resolution redesign, with language changes to taste

#63

Post by ChrisGreenHeur »

quotemstr wrote: post #42
nickysielicki wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The forever backwards compatible promise of C++ was a tremendous design mistake that has resulted in mindshare death as of 2026. It might suck to have to modify your code to continue to get it to work, but it’s the right long term approach.

Hilariously, they broke this compatibility. std::auto_ptr was an abomination, but removing it from the language was needless and undermined the long term stability that differentiates C++ from upstarts.

those that used it were rightly punished by the removal

Re: Type resolution redesign, with language changes to taste

#64

Post by norman784 »

AndyKelley wrote: post #11
throwaway17_17 wrote: post #7

Congratulations to the dev, a 30,000 line PR for a language compiler (and a very much non-trivial compiler) is a feat to be proud of. But a change of this magnitude is a serious bit of development and gave me pause. I understand both of the following: 1. Language development is a tricky subject, in general, but especially for those languages looking for wide adoption or hoping for ‘generational’ (program life span be…

Originally, Zig's type system was less disciplined in terms of the "zero" type (also known as "noreturn"). This was proposed, discussed, and accepted here: https://github.com/ziglang/zig/issues/3257 Later, Matthew Lugg made a follow-up proposal, which was discussed both publicly and in ZSF core team meetings. https://github.com/ziglang/zig/issues/15909 He writes: > A (fairly uncontroversial) subset of this behavior w…

I don't use Zig (is not a language for me), but I like to read/watch about it, when you or others talk about the language design and the reasons behind the changes.

Thanks for your and the Zig team work.

Re: Type resolution redesign, with language changes to taste

#65

Post by benob »

lionkor wrote: post #62
ryanxsim wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really wanted to deep dive into zig but I'm into rust now kinda late as I'm really just started like 2024. Have you tried rust? how does it compared to zig? * just asking

Zig is a modern C, Rust is a modern C++/OCaml So if you enjoy C++, Rust is for you. If you enjoy C and wish it was more verbose and more modern, try Zig.

Time to start zig++

Re: Type resolution redesign, with language changes to taste

#66

Post by divan »

Cloudef wrote: post #22
h4ch1 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why is it so big in the first place? I was searching around for causes and came across the following issues: https://github.com/ziglang/zig/issues/15358 which was moved to https://codeberg.org/ziglang/zig/issues/30193 The following quotes stand out > zig's caching system is designed explicitly so that garbage collection could happen in one process simultaneously while the cache is being used by another process. >…

AFAIK garbage collection is basically not implemented yet. I myself do `ZIG_LOCAL_CACHE_DIR=~/.cache/zig` so I only have to nuke single directory whenever I feel like it.

what exactly people call 'garbage collection' in Zig? build cache cleanup?

Re: Type resolution redesign, with language changes to taste

#67

Post by bayindirh »

lionkor wrote: post #62
ryanxsim wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really wanted to deep dive into zig but I'm into rust now kinda late as I'm really just started like 2024. Have you tried rust? how does it compared to zig? * just asking

Zig is a modern C, Rust is a modern C++/OCaml So if you enjoy C++, Rust is for you. If you enjoy C and wish it was more verbose and more modern, try Zig.

Seriously asking, where Go sits in this categorization?

Re: Type resolution redesign, with language changes to taste

#68

Post by shilgapira »

bayindirh wrote: post #67
lionkor wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zig is a modern C, Rust is a modern C++/OCaml So if you enjoy C++, Rust is for you. If you enjoy C and wish it was more verbose and more modern, try Zig.

Seriously asking, where Go sits in this categorization?

It's also a modern C.

If you enjoy C and wish it was less verbose and more modern, try Go.

Re: Type resolution redesign, with language changes to taste

#69

Post by bayindirh »

shilgapira wrote: post #68
bayindirh wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously asking, where Go sits in this categorization?

It's also a modern C. If you enjoy C and wish it was less verbose and more modern, try Go.

Thanks. I write some Go, and feel the same about it. I really enjoy it actually.

Maybe I'll jump to Zig as a side-gig (ha, it rhymes), but I still can't motivate myself to play with Rust. I'm happy with C++ on that regard.

Maybe gccrs will change that, IDK, yet.

Re: Type resolution redesign, with language changes to taste

#70

Post by andrewl-hn »

bayindirh wrote: post #67
lionkor wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zig is a modern C, Rust is a modern C++/OCaml So if you enjoy C++, Rust is for you. If you enjoy C and wish it was more verbose and more modern, try Zig.

Seriously asking, where Go sits in this categorization?

Go is modern Java, at least based on the main area of usage: server infrastructure and backend services.
Post reply on HN