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Zig by Example

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Re: Zig by Example

#21

Post by jdw64 »

Is Zig just a trend, or will it become a solidly established language? After all, learning something is an investment of time. With Zig, it doesn't seem to have the same kind of industry pressure as Rust. There's talk in open source circles about AI-related issues, and on Hacker News people say good things about Zig. The allocator concept looks great. But there's also a possibility that it won't become mainstream, like the D language. I personally like D and think its compiler is beautiful, but being linguistically good is different from being industrially adopted. So should I learn Zig, or wait a bit longer?

For now, I have a basic grasp of C#, a little Python, a little C++, and a little TypeScript. I also know Java to some extent, but honestly, what I mostly build is CRUD app assembly. To go deeper, I think I need to dig into a systems language. But I'm not sure whether to invest in Zig or Rust.

Re: Zig by Example

#22

Post by miroljub »

voidUpdate wrote: post #16
miroljub wrote: post #10

Looking for a resource (MCP, CLI, Skill, ...) that would improve Zig support in LLMs. Currently, doing something with Zig as a target language would spend many more tokens and produce subpar results.

If you worked through this and learnt to use zig, your token usage would be even lower!

What's wrong with learning by reviewing the LLM generated code and asking questions interactively? Works for other languages.

Re: Zig by Example

#23

Post by anonfunction »

miroljub wrote: post #10

Looking for a resource (MCP, CLI, Skill, ...) that would improve Zig support in LLMs. Currently, doing something with Zig as a target language would spend many more tokens and produce subpar results.

One of the preeminent Zig software projects, Tigerbeetle[1], has a great website[2] and markdown file[3] for what they call TigerStyle.

It's honestly a great read as a human but also I packaged it as a skill and saw coding agent improvement, especially around memory usage.

1. https://tigerbeetle.com/

2. https://tigerstyle.dev/

3. https://github.com/tigerbeetle/tigerbeetle/blob/main/docs/TI...

Re: Zig by Example

#24

Post by sgt »

embedding-shape wrote: post #20
shaftoe444 wrote: post #2

Examples target Zig 0.14. Been some significant changes since then, not least to printing and formatting (see writergate).

Ah, but are those changes in the training data yet?

Probably not, but if this is all AI slop then why bother to read it? There's real documentation (and/or just code). Use it

Re: Zig by Example

#25

Post by tempaccount420 »

jdw64 wrote: post #21

Is Zig just a trend, or will it become a solidly established language? After all, learning something is an investment of time. With Zig, it doesn't seem to have the same kind of industry pressure as Rust. There's talk in open source circles about AI-related issues, and on Hacker News people say good things about Zig. The allocator concept looks great. But there's also a possibility that it won't become mainstream, li…

IMO, there isn't much space left to fill that Rust couldn't already fill.

Re: Zig by Example

#26

Post by pseidemann »

jdw64 wrote: post #21

Is Zig just a trend, or will it become a solidly established language? After all, learning something is an investment of time. With Zig, it doesn't seem to have the same kind of industry pressure as Rust. There's talk in open source circles about AI-related issues, and on Hacker News people say good things about Zig. The allocator concept looks great. But there's also a possibility that it won't become mainstream, li…

If you want to learn systems programming, I can recommend learning C. If you want to learn a programming language which allows systems programming, I guess Rust is not a bad choice. But it might be less helpful if the systems basics are unknown.

Re: Zig by Example

#27

Post by groan »

jdw64 wrote: post #21

Is Zig just a trend, or will it become a solidly established language? After all, learning something is an investment of time. With Zig, it doesn't seem to have the same kind of industry pressure as Rust. There's talk in open source circles about AI-related issues, and on Hacker News people say good things about Zig. The allocator concept looks great. But there's also a possibility that it won't become mainstream, li…

Unless you’re actively promoting one of the languages for financial gain, you have nothing to lose by delaying commitment to one, both, or either. If any of them have lasting value, they will be as easy to pick up in the future as they are now. Nobody cares about the old Java or .NET versions where both suffered from limited implementations of generics and other things, and nobody is a better programmer for having used them back then compared to picking them up today.

Re: Zig by Example

#28

Post by CyberDildonics »

jdw64 wrote: post #21

Is Zig just a trend, or will it become a solidly established language? After all, learning something is an investment of time. With Zig, it doesn't seem to have the same kind of industry pressure as Rust. There's talk in open source circles about AI-related issues, and on Hacker News people say good things about Zig. The allocator concept looks great. But there's also a possibility that it won't become mainstream, li…

It's unsafe and intentionally crashes on windows newlines and tabs. If C adopts defer, I don't think there will be enough of a differentiation to overcome the cynical user hostility.

Just because people don't like this doesn't mean it's not true.

Re: Zig by Example

#29

Post by jdw64 »

groan wrote: post #27
jdw64 wrote: post #21

Is Zig just a trend, or will it become a solidly established language? After all, learning something is an investment of time. With Zig, it doesn't seem to have the same kind of industry pressure as Rust. There's talk in open source circles about AI-related issues, and on Hacker News people say good things about Zig. The allocator concept looks great. But there's also a possibility that it won't become mainstream, li…

Unless you’re actively promoting one of the languages for financial gain, you have nothing to lose by delaying commitment to one, both, or either. If any of them have lasting value, they will be as easy to pick up in the future as they are now. Nobody cares about the old Java or .NET versions where both suffered from limited implementations of generics and other things, and nobody is a better programmer for having us…

Learning a language is ultimately for the purpose of building something, so doing both is a bit difficult. Personally, I find Zig easier and more approachable than Rust, so I've been reading about it, but I'm worried about what I can actually do with it

Re: Zig by Example

#30

Post by tialaramex »

eclectric wrote: post #12
pezgrande wrote: post #8

I like Zig but stopped learning it when I realized that all project based on it requires a specific version of the compiler to build.

I would be interested to learn why that is a problem. As a new Rust learner, I am curious.

Historically, say, 15 years ago before 1.0, Rust too was always shifting about and so you'd find that the software you wrote last month now doesn't even compile and the advice has changed.

Today most people write entirely stable† Rust, and as somebody else mentioned Rust uses Editions to allow it to make any remaining language improvements, but if you were writing mostly unstable Rust you would see a reduced version of the same churn. Last month you could foozle.boozle() and that gets you a Wibble, but then you upgraded and now foozle doesn't have a boozle method, and apparently Wibbles no longer exist at all, everybody says you need to learn about Wumps instead now because those are apparently better or something?

† If you don't use a "nightly" build of Rust or a special opt-in "nightly mode" your Rust compiler only recognises the stable language.

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