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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

#161

Post by tel »

virtualritz wrote: post #23
brabel wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I do not think this is a viable excuse any more. I am just editing docs now that Claude Code writes for me. I am fanatic about developer docs (and I guess an exception as I love writing them) but with a set of concise instructions for CC and some writing style examples I get 90% there, sometimes 99%. If you believe you don't have time for the last 1--10% you should not be in charge of writing any API used by anyone b…

At the same time, if you want to use Claude to read the source and narrate how it works to you that’s trivial to do as a user.

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

#162

Post by mikepurvis »

virtualritz wrote: post #23
brabel wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I do not think this is a viable excuse any more. I am just editing docs now that Claude Code writes for me. I am fanatic about developer docs (and I guess an exception as I love writing them) but with a set of concise instructions for CC and some writing style examples I get 90% there, sometimes 99%. If you believe you don't have time for the last 1--10% you should not be in charge of writing any API used by anyone b…

As a senior dev I’m also passionate about docs and communication, and actually kind of love the process of agonizing over a bunch of rST files to get the perfect manual that’s both an on-boarding guide and also a reference of all the nooks and crannies.

I think what I’ve come to realize is that when I feel a barrier toward doing that work, it’s a sign that I don’t actually like the underlying API. I don’t want to document it or craft examples or tutorials because in my mind the API sucks, it’s transitional, and documenting it in its current state is going to somehow lock in a bad interface and further increase the effort required to change and fix it up later.

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

#163

Post by throwawaymaths »

jedisct1 wrote: post #30

The new I/O interface makes printing a simple “Hello, world!” more complicated, but once you get used to it, the design is actually very clean, versatile, and future-proof. Since 0.15, though, I feel too dumb for Zig’s ArrayList.

i think hello world is actually easier? getstdout doesnt exist anymore and its equivalent is nonfailable.

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

#164

Post by [deleted] »

dns_snek wrote: post #160
0x696C6961 wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a false dichotomy, it's a bandwidth issue. I'd rather the core team focus on stuff like incremental compilation.

"No documentation" and "Core devs 'wasting' time on writing high quality documentation" aren't the only two options, that's what a false dichotomy means. Other options include but are not limited to providing minimal, low effort examples, high-level overview, linking to projects using these features, linking to relevant tests, commits, or source code, setting up an official community wiki and encouraging people to co…

[deleted]

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

#165

Post by throwawaymaths »

simonask wrote: post #113
flohofwoe wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You put "just" in scare quotes ...I don't use them as "scare quotes", it's more like in "can't you just..." - e.g. something that looks simple from the outside but is hard to do / complex on the inside - e.g. I do recognize the work that went into Rust's memory safety, but I question the effort that went into it compared to more traditional memory safety methods, especially when looking at the restrictions that Rus…

I mean, there's no winning here. Either the language is too complex and does too many things, or it's not complex enough and relegates fundamental things to the standard library. I don't thing there is any substantial difference between `Option ` and `@Nullable Thing` or `Thing | null`, I don't think there's anything wrong with choosing `::` over `.` for namespace resolution (it means you can have local variables wit…

doesn't the llvm coroutines require c's malloc? this is part of the reason why zig scrapped async. i would suspect Rust's async/await does allocate behind your back

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

#166

Post by adwn »

throwawaymaths wrote: post #153
adwn wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> IIRC, it was a performance thing […] Why would you care about these kinds of micro-optimizations at that stage of development, when you don't even know what exactly you need to build? We're not talking about serious algorithmic improvements like turning O(n²) into O(n) here. > Freeing memory can actually cost you performance, so why not just let the OS clean up for you at exit(2)? Because a compiler is not some sim…

> Why would you care about these kinds of micro-optimizations it turns out that compiler speed is bound by a bunch of things, and it's death by a thousand cuts. If you have a slow compiler, and it takes forever to compile your compiler, your language becomes scelerotic, no one wants to make changes, and your language gets stuck in shitty choices. > Because a compiler is not some simple CLI tool with a fixed upper bou…

You're losing sight of the full picture: This "optimization" was such a hindrance that they had to rewrite the compiler before they could work on the ecosystem of their new language. From kristoff_it's comment [1]:

> When I first joined the Zig project, Zig was still using the bootstrap compiler written in C++ that would not free memory (it took more than 4GB to compile the Zig compiler). Some people at the time were asking us to prioritize work on the package manager but Andrew rightfully wanted to prioritize rewriting the compiler instead. In hindsight this was the obviously right decision: a package manager implies that one can very easily add an order of magnitude more code to their project, stressing the performance of the compiler. If we had not prioritized core infrastructure over giving people what they wanted faster, today we would have people complaining that adding a single dependency to their project makes the build impossible to complete.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44994886

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

#167

Post by keyle »

throwawaymaths wrote: post #151
keyle wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would hurt adoption. I understand things move fast but if you want people to make the switch other than hello world, it has to be at a minimum cosy. Sending them to hell and find your way out isn't a good move long term. I tried Zig a couple of times and I got that feeling: very powerful and clever language but not really for me, I don't have the headspace, sorry. I need something I can debug after an 8 hours da…

after chasing some insane macro gymnastics whivh are there to make the c portble, i came to understand that zig is more easy to debug than c

I don't live in that universe! I thanos flicked it off!

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

#168

Post by ioasuncvinvaer »

BobbyJo wrote: post #154
foxes wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want to read ai slop comments. If you cant be bothered writing docs, I cant be bothered learning to use your library.

Just because and AI produced it doesn't mean it is slop.

But it is a pretty good signal of low quality.

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

#169

Post by throwawaymaths »

adwn wrote: post #166
throwawaymaths wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why would you care about these kinds of micro-optimizations it turns out that compiler speed is bound by a bunch of things, and it's death by a thousand cuts. If you have a slow compiler, and it takes forever to compile your compiler, your language becomes scelerotic, no one wants to make changes, and your language gets stuck in shitty choices. > Because a compiler is not some simple CLI tool with a fixed upper bou…

You're losing sight of the full picture: This "optimization" was such a hindrance that they had to rewrite the compiler before they could work on the ecosystem of their new language. From kristoff_it's comment [1]: > When I first joined the Zig project, Zig was still using the bootstrap compiler written in C++ that would not free memory (it took more than 4GB to compile the Zig compiler). Some people at the time were…

no. a global arena is not the right solution for every project. but believe it or not, the zig compiler does use arenas as one of its strategies (just not global arenas), so yes, access to that strategy for performance improvement is still important and absolutely being used in the zig compiler today.

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

#170

Post by steveklabnik »

throwawaymaths wrote: post #165
simonask wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, there's no winning here. Either the language is too complex and does too many things, or it's not complex enough and relegates fundamental things to the standard library. I don't thing there is any substantial difference between `Option ` and `@Nullable Thing` or `Thing | null`, I don't think there's anything wrong with choosing `::` over `.` for namespace resolution (it means you can have local variables wit…

doesn't the llvm coroutines require c's malloc? this is part of the reason why zig scrapped async. i would suspect Rust's async/await does allocate behind your back

Rust does not. It also doesn’t use LLVM’s coroutines.
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