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Why is Zig so cool?

nilostolte.github.io

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Re: Why is Zig so cool?

#421

Post by NewsaHackO »

evgpbfhnr wrote: post #52

To author -- code sample as images is great for syntax highlight but I wanted to play with the examples and.. got stuck trying to copy the content. (also expected tesseract to do a bit better than this: $ wl-paste -t image/png | tesseract -l eng - - Estimating resolution as 199 const std = @import("std"); const expect = std.testing.expect; const Point = struct {x: i32, y: i32}; test "anonymous struct literal" { const…

Yeah, he definitely should have used a code block for the examples. To the author, if you are trying to preserve code formatting and syntax highlighting, there are JS packages that will take care of all of that and produce clean, copyable, well-rendered, accessible code formatting for you.

Re: Why is Zig so cool?

#422

Post by pyrolistical »

Panzerschrek wrote: post #303
59nadir wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think destructors/`Drop` traits or the like are good then Zig was never for you. It has nothing to do with "industrial development", neither does memory safety. The irony is that memory safety as a concept definitely is overhyped.

Destructors aren't just good. They are one of the most important innovations in programming, since they reduce boilerplate and prevent many bugs. Developing a language without them means introducing more bugs which could be avoided.

It violates one of zigs principle of no hidden control flow

Re: Why is Zig so cool?

#423

Post by pron »

WalterBright wrote: post #417
pron wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Partial evaluation has been quite well known at least since 1943 and Kleene's Smn proof. It has since been put to use, in various forms, by quite a few languages (including C++ in 1990, and even C in the early seventies). But the extent and the way in which Zig specifically puts it to use -- which includes, but is not limited to, how it is used to replace other features that can then be avoided (and all without macro…

I'd like to see an example! as I cannot think of one.

An example of what?

Re: Why is Zig so cool?

#426

Post by eden-u4 »

pron wrote: post #423
WalterBright wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to see an example! as I cannot think of one.

An example of what?

Not OP, but I guess based on your comment:

> But the extent and the way in which Zig specifically puts it to use -- which includes, but is not limited to, how it is used to replace other features that can then be avoided (and all without macros) -- is unprecedented.

That MrWhite wanted to knkw an example of Zig's comptime that is not merely a "macro", rather the usage as a replacement of other features (I guess more complex..)

PS just interested in zig, I'd like some pointer to these cool feature :)

Re: Why is Zig so cool?

#427

Post by pron »

WalterBright wrote: post #424
pron wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An example of what?

An unprecedented use.

Ok, so a primary goal of comptime in Zig is to avoid needing certain specialised features while still enjoying their functionality, in particular, generics, interfaces, and macros. I'm not aware of any language that has been able to eliminate all of these features and replace them with a simple, unified partial evaluation mechanism.

In addition, there's the classic example of implementing a parameterised print (think printf) in Zig. This is a very basic use of comptime, and it isn't used here in lieu of generics or of interfaces, but while there may be some language that can do that without any kind of explicit code generation (e.g. macros), there certainly aren't many such examples: https://ziglang.org/documentation/0.15.2/#Case-Study-print-i...

But the main point is that the unprecedented use of partial evaluation is in having a single unified mechanism that replaces generics, interfaces, and macros. If a language has any one of them as a distinct feature, then it is not using partial evaluation as Zig does. To continue my analogy to the novel use of a touchscreen in the iPhone, the simplest test was: if your phone had a physical keypad or keyboard, then it did not use a touchscreen the way the iPhone did.

Re: Why is Zig so cool?

#428

Post by WalterBright »

pron wrote: post #427
WalterBright wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An unprecedented use.

Ok, so a primary goal of comptime in Zig is to avoid needing certain specialised features while still enjoying their functionality, in particular, generics, interfaces, and macros. I'm not aware of any language that has been able to eliminate all of these features and replace them with a simple, unified partial evaluation mechanism. In addition, there's the classic example of implementing a parameterised print (think…

D's `write` function is generic:

    write(1,2,"abc",4.0,'c');
write is declared as:

    void write(S...)(S args) { ... }
where `S...` means an arbitrary sequence of types represented by `S`. The implementation loops over the sequence, handling each type in its own individual fashion. User defined types work as well.

Re: Why is Zig so cool?

#429

Post by pron »

WalterBright wrote: post #428
pron wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, so a primary goal of comptime in Zig is to avoid needing certain specialised features while still enjoying their functionality, in particular, generics, interfaces, and macros. I'm not aware of any language that has been able to eliminate all of these features and replace them with a simple, unified partial evaluation mechanism. In addition, there's the classic example of implementing a parameterised print (think…

D's `write` function is generic: write(1,2,"abc",4.0,'c'); write is declared as: void write(S...)(S args) { ... } where `S...` means an arbitrary sequence of types represented by `S`. The implementation loops over the sequence, handling each type in its own individual fashion. User defined types work as well.

If D has a separate feature for one of: generic types, interfaces and macros, then obviously it doesn't use partial evaluation similarly to how Zig does. It seems to me that it has all three: templates, interfaces, and string mixins. So if Zig uses its unified partial evaluation feature to eliminate these three separate features, why bring up D, which clearly does not eliminate any one of them?

It's like saying the the iPhone design wasn't novel except for the fact that prior art all had a keypad. But the design was novel in that it was intended to eliminate the keypad. Zig's comptime feature is novel in that it exists to eliminate interfaces, generics, and macros, and you're bringing up a language that eliminates none of them.

So D clearly isn't an example, but perhaps there's some other language I haven't heard of. Just out of curiosity, can a printf in D not only check types at compile time but also generate formatting code while still allowing for runtime variables and without (!!!) the use of string mixins? Like I said, it's possible there's precedent for that (even though it isn't the distinguishing feature), and I wonder if D is that. I'm asking because examples I've seen in D either do use string mixins or do not actually do what the Zig implementation does.

Re: Why is Zig so cool?

#430

Post by librasteve »

rixed wrote: post #312
librasteve wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For quite a long time, I have been wondering why I like to code in Raku so much … in a round about way you set me thinking. Perhaps it’s because, in Raku, precision, performance and determinism take a back seat to expediency. (Sorry for the tangent).

Went to have a look to the (beautiful and informative) website for the raku language to refresh my memory, and looking at the examples I though "Oh god, those sigills, those criptic short keywords... it looks like a modern perl, I doubt we would be happy together", then I went to wikipedia to check and yes indeed, that's perl 6! I'll pass. :)

Thanks for the feedback on the raku.org site. We like sigils $ for one thing (scalar), @ for many things (array) and % for dictionaries (hash). The linguistic idea is that such words stand out as “nouns” in contrast to all the routine names which are “verbs”. In practice, after you get familiar, it really helps code to be written in an expressive way to better convey the intent. Sure, if sigils makes you glaze over then maybe it’s not for you.
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