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I'm too dumb for Zig's new IO interface

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Re: I'm too dumb for Zig's new IO interface

#11

Post by brabel »

hardwaresofton wrote: post #8

I'm not a Zig PM but the first obvious fix for the issues the OP wrote about is to write better documentation, including usage examples (the more the better, almost to a fault). Also doubles as a good time to reflect on whether the user is having to do too much. If the tradeoff was absolute performance/avoiding introducing load-bearing performance-lowering abstraction I think that goal was achieved, but DX may have g…

You’re not familiar with Zig’s culture, I guess. Complain about the lack of documentation and be prepared for the flood of “just read the stdlib code” helpful comments by pretty much everyone who writes Zig right now. Because most APIs are just as hard to use as in this post (check things like HTTP and even basic file system operations) only the strongest survive.

Re: I'm too dumb for Zig's new IO interface

#12

Post by ozgrakkurt »

8s2ngy wrote: post #10

I’m sorry, but any non-trivial Zig code gives me PTSD flashbacks of C. I don’t understand who Zig is targeting: with pervasive mutability, manual allocation, and a lack of proper sum types, it feels like a step back from languages such as Rust. If it is indeed a different way to write code, one that embraces default memory unsafety, why would I choose it over C, which has decades of work behind it? Am I missing some…

Compared to C:

Discriminated unions, error handling, comptime, defer.

Better default integer type casting, ability to choose between releaseSafe/releaseFast

And probably other things.

As for comparison to Rust, you do want very low level memory handling for writing databases as an example. It is extremely difficult to write low level libraries in Rust

Re: I'm too dumb for Zig's new IO interface

#13

Post by ulbu »

hardwaresofton wrote: post #8

I'm not a Zig PM but the first obvious fix for the issues the OP wrote about is to write better documentation, including usage examples (the more the better, almost to a fault). Also doubles as a good time to reflect on whether the user is having to do too much. If the tradeoff was absolute performance/avoiding introducing load-bearing performance-lowering abstraction I think that goal was achieved, but DX may have g…

i find that zig is too oriented at doling out directives for what not to do instead of just collecting and teaching variants of how and what to do. the lack of documentation on this interface is a sore case in point.

Re: I'm too dumb for Zig's new IO interface

#15

Post by LAC-Tech »

8s2ngy wrote: post #10

I’m sorry, but any non-trivial Zig code gives me PTSD flashbacks of C. I don’t understand who Zig is targeting: with pervasive mutability, manual allocation, and a lack of proper sum types, it feels like a step back from languages such as Rust. If it is indeed a different way to write code, one that embraces default memory unsafety, why would I choose it over C, which has decades of work behind it? Am I missing some…

Zig is a systems programming language. I think that's probably who it's targeting.

People do systems programming in rust, but that's not really what most of the community is doing. And it's DEFINITELY not what the standard library is designed for.

Re: I'm too dumb for Zig's new IO interface

#16

Post by 0x696C6961 »

hardwaresofton wrote: post #8

I'm not a Zig PM but the first obvious fix for the issues the OP wrote about is to write better documentation, including usage examples (the more the better, almost to a fault). Also doubles as a good time to reflect on whether the user is having to do too much. If the tradeoff was absolute performance/avoiding introducing load-bearing performance-lowering abstraction I think that goal was achieved, but DX may have g…

Writing good docs/examples takes a lot of effort. It would be a waste considering the amount of churn that happens in zig at this point.

Re: I'm too dumb for Zig's new IO interface

#17

Post by jakobnissen »

hardwaresofton wrote: post #8

I'm not a Zig PM but the first obvious fix for the issues the OP wrote about is to write better documentation, including usage examples (the more the better, almost to a fault). Also doubles as a good time to reflect on whether the user is having to do too much. If the tradeoff was absolute performance/avoiding introducing load-bearing performance-lowering abstraction I think that goal was achieved, but DX may have g…

There is a cost to writing documentation - it takes time, which could be used to improve Zig in other areas. For code that is work-in-progress, it can make sense to not document until things are more settled.

Of course documentation is good. But if you have to prioritize either a new feature, or a critical bugfix, or documentation, you often can't have it all

Re: I'm too dumb for Zig's new IO interface

#18

Post by pjmlp »

benreesman wrote: post #9
pjmlp wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if use after free story actually gets fixed, and not by repurposing what has already existed in the C and C++ ecosystems for the last 30 years, like PurifyPlus or VC++ debug allocator.

If you mean running clang-tidy as a separate build step or ASAN in a different category than other soundness checks? Compute is getting tight, lots of trends, the age of C++ is winding down gracefully. The age of Zig is emerging delibetately, and the stuff in the middle will end up in the same historical trash bin as everything else in the Altman Era: the misfortunes of losing sight of the technology.

I mean those and other ones, we already have enough unsafe languages as it is.

The age of C++ is going great, despite all its warts and unsafety, thanks to compiler frameworks like GCC and LLVM, games industry, GPGPU and Khronos APIs.

Even if C++ loses everywhere else, it has enough industry mindshare to keep being relevant.

Same applies to C, in the context of UNIX clones, POSIX, Khronos, embedded.

Being like Modula-2 or Object Pascal in safety, in C like syntax, isn't enough.

Re: I'm too dumb for Zig's new IO interface

#20

Post by hardwaresofton »

brabel wrote: post #11
hardwaresofton wrote: post #8

I'm not a Zig PM but the first obvious fix for the issues the OP wrote about is to write better documentation, including usage examples (the more the better, almost to a fault). Also doubles as a good time to reflect on whether the user is having to do too much. If the tradeoff was absolute performance/avoiding introducing load-bearing performance-lowering abstraction I think that goal was achieved, but DX may have g…

You’re not familiar with Zig’s culture, I guess. Complain about the lack of documentation and be prepared for the flood of “just read the stdlib code” helpful comments by pretty much everyone who writes Zig right now. Because most APIs are just as hard to use as in this post (check things like HTTP and even basic file system operations) only the strongest survive.

Yeah, thinking about this attitude positively, maybe it’s a feature — if only hard core people can comfortably figure it out, you get higher quality contributions?

Not trying to imply that’s an explicit goal (probably instead just a resource problem), but an observation

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