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Interview with Mitchell Hashimoto about Ghostty and Zig

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Re: Interview with Mitchell Hashimoto about Ghostty and Zig

#11

Post by nine_k »

pron wrote: post #7
skhameneh wrote: post #2

> I don’t like the Rust culture. There’s no better way to put it. This is just so weird to me, because I would say the same about Zig. I tried to get into Zig even chatted with Loris Cro when he was streaming. I was looking to explore what my Rust project could look like in Zig but there were features simply missing that I couldn't do without. The entire interaction was mostly about how bad Rust is and how I could ju…

> This is just so weird to me, because I would say the same about Zig. Then why is it weird if you're saying the same thing? Different programming languages appeal to programmers with different tastes, and so it makes sense that some programmers would be drawn to language X and dislike language Y, while others would be the opposite.

Maybe it's even the other way around: different cultures and tastes give birth to different languages and community norms around them.

Re: Interview with Mitchell Hashimoto about Ghostty and Zig

#12

Post by bri3d »

skhameneh wrote: post #2

> I don’t like the Rust culture. There’s no better way to put it. This is just so weird to me, because I would say the same about Zig. I tried to get into Zig even chatted with Loris Cro when he was streaming. I was looking to explore what my Rust project could look like in Zig but there were features simply missing that I couldn't do without. The entire interaction was mostly about how bad Rust is and how I could ju…

This is weird to me too, especially to say in the present tense in 2026.

I think I get the point about "Rust culture" (although it's too vague to agree or disagree with, probably on purpose).

But in 2026, Rust is fully a commodity language, and especially to compare it to Zig in this angle is bizarre. Even turning my stereotypes to 11 and thinking back to when I worked with a team developing Rust professionally in 2021, I'd say we got mostly ended up hiring "proglang enthusiasts" and not "Rust people." In terms of "cultural dilution" alone Zig is orders of magnitude more culty than Rust because that many fewer people use it.

Re: Interview with Mitchell Hashimoto about Ghostty and Zig

#13

Post by pron »

cogogo wrote: post #8
pron wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is just so weird to me, because I would say the same about Zig. Then why is it weird if you're saying the same thing? Different programming languages appeal to programmers with different tastes, and so it makes sense that some programmers would be drawn to language X and dislike language Y, while others would be the opposite.

The year is 2026 and the only thing about coding that matters anymore is taste. Edit: Thought about scare quoting “taste”

It's not necessarily the thing that matters most to executives, who are often those making decisions, but it's always been the thing that mattered most to programmers (at least those of them who have any emotions or strong preferences toward programming languages).

Re: Interview with Mitchell Hashimoto about Ghostty and Zig

#14

Post by jeltz »

cogogo wrote: post #8
pron wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is just so weird to me, because I would say the same about Zig. Then why is it weird if you're saying the same thing? Different programming languages appeal to programmers with different tastes, and so it makes sense that some programmers would be drawn to language X and dislike language Y, while others would be the opposite.

The year is 2026 and the only thing about coding that matters anymore is taste. Edit: Thought about scare quoting “taste”

Pretty sure you could have said the same in 1986 and I know for sure you could have in 2006. Not sure why you think people having different tastes is new.

Re: Interview with Mitchell Hashimoto about Ghostty and Zig

#15

Post by waterTanuki »

> The philosophy behind [Rust] and the language itself is really good. I just don’t want to use it.

That's all that needed to be said. He only makes himself and the rest of the Zig "community" look as petty as some of the worst Rust people with the surrounding remarks. Why does anyone need to care what a few randoms think of a language? Either it gets used or it doesn't.

Re: Interview with Mitchell Hashimoto about Ghostty and Zig

#16

Post by bansimonw »

cogogo wrote: post #8
pron wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is just so weird to me, because I would say the same about Zig. Then why is it weird if you're saying the same thing? Different programming languages appeal to programmers with different tastes, and so it makes sense that some programmers would be drawn to language X and dislike language Y, while others would be the opposite.

The year is 2026 and the only thing about coding that matters anymore is taste. Edit: Thought about scare quoting “taste”

[dead]

Re: Interview with Mitchell Hashimoto about Ghostty and Zig

#17

Post by mountainriver »

skhameneh wrote: post #2

> I don’t like the Rust culture. There’s no better way to put it. This is just so weird to me, because I would say the same about Zig. I tried to get into Zig even chatted with Loris Cro when he was streaming. I was looking to explore what my Rust project could look like in Zig but there were features simply missing that I couldn't do without. The entire interaction was mostly about how bad Rust is and how I could ju…

I feel this way about most Hashi tools, they just seem massively overrated to me.

Ghostty is fine I guess, I find it to be way buggier than iterm with a fraction of the features.

Zig is fine, has some cool stuff, the community seems roughly the same as the rust, with again just way less features.

The rest of the hashi tools are fine, I don’t really use any of them anymore. Vault was a big deal at some point I guess

Re: Interview with Mitchell Hashimoto about Ghostty and Zig

#18

Post by fwip »

waterTanuki wrote: post #15

> The philosophy behind [Rust] and the language itself is really good. I just don’t want to use it. That's all that needed to be said. He only makes himself and the rest of the Zig "community" look as petty as some of the worst Rust people with the surrounding remarks. Why does anyone need to care what a few randoms think of a language? Either it gets used or it doesn't.

As a guy who writes a famous Zig project, he probably gets a lot of young, eager Rust advocates trying to sell him on it. If it's his primary experience with the community, no wonder he's fed up.

Re: Interview with Mitchell Hashimoto about Ghostty and Zig

#19

Post by tecoholic »

Man, these are the kinds of things that I am so happy to read. People who think and care deeply about what they do, take pragmatic decisions that appears right to them and explain why they do things the way they do. Very motivating. Literally moved me from the couch to the work desk .

Re: Interview with Mitchell Hashimoto about Ghostty and Zig

#20

Post by sgarland »

This is the only statement I disagree with:

> PowerShell gets a lot right with structured data.

CLI programs should operate on text. If you want to parse and format it, do so, but the default output mode should be plain text, so that I can pipe it into grep or awk without a second thought.

I am continuously irritated that the AWS CLI defaults to outputting in JSON. No one (I hope…) is using that tool in programs; that’s what boto3 and its ilk are for. But if humans are reading it, why default to something that they’re almost certainly going to be piping into jq if only for the formatting help?

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