Zig is becoming more production-worthy

Post by ksec » Tue, Jul 05, 2022, 7:11 PM UTC

japhib wrote: post #52

I used Zig for a couple of Advent of Code problems last year. I decided that Zig is not a language I’m going to be using. Here’s why: - If you ever want to allocate memory, you have to pass in an allocator to the function doing the allocating. You also have to explicitly allocate and deallocate. - Zig has no concept of a string - it’s just a slice of bytes. This also means Zig has no support for string concatenation,…

Post by pjmlp » Tue, Jul 05, 2022, 9:36 PM UTC

verdagon wrote: post #7

danielscrubs wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks like it has nice syntax but it seems very very far from pushing state of the art, and that is totally fine.

It can seem like that on the surface, but a closer look reveals a lot of very interesting new features. Here's a few off the top of my head: * Comptime, which can serve the purpose of generics without a new sub-language [1] * Colorblind async-await, basically parameterizing async-ness to avoid the downsides of async's infectious nature [2] * Hot-code swapping proof-of-concept [3] (Edit: specifically, new to low-level…

Post by pjmlp » Wed, Jul 06, 2022, 6:24 AM UTC

brabel wrote: post #64

pjmlp wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we ignore Java, .NET, Common Lisp and C++.

Those are not compiled to native code (C++ has hot swapping?), which is the obvious meaning of hot-swapping we're discussing here.

Post by pjmlp » Wed, Jul 06, 2022, 8:43 PM UTC

brabel wrote: post #66

pjmlp wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They surely are,you apparently aren't aware of the available toolchains for such purpose. Plenty of coments of mine where I list what exists since their early days. Yes, C++ compilers like Visual C++ support it. Or Unreal tooling like Live++.

But you claim Java can hot swap... I happen to know all about hot-swapping in Java, and it's only good for very simple debugging reloads... not at all at the same level as Dart VM. No one who knows Java would claim that. Common Lisp is only hot-swappable when you're not running a binary, at least from what I know of SBCL. So, it's hard to take your comment seriously. I am unfamiliar with Visual C++'s hot-swapping cap…

Post by girvo » Thu, Jul 07, 2022, 8:21 AM UTC

birdfood wrote: post #35

girvo wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m excited for Zig’s possible future in embedded, too. I currently use Nim for our firmware at work, because at the end of the day —compileOnly means it’s just C. It’s been excellent for ESP-IDF/FreeRTOS, but I’d love to see Zig tackle it as well. One lovely side effect of using Nim is our “business logic” code is remarkably simple in the firmware, as I got PPPoS working nicely with our Cat-M1/LTE NB-IoT modem, so m…

I've been diving into Nim in my free time after experimenting with Zig and Rust. I really appreciate how clearly I can layout business logic in code without needing to qualify what the compiler should do (my biggest issue with rust is all the stuff you need to do to satisfy the borrow checker I feel obfuscates your intention). Getting to use Nim for your day job sounds like a dream! I'm particularly keen on Nim's UFC…

    esp_err_t sw_enableRx(SwSerial *self, bool State)

    proc sw_enableRx*(self: ptr SwSerial, State: bool): esp_err_t {.importc: "$1", header: "".}

    var port = sw_open(params, etc)
    port.enableRx(true)