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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

#81

Post by zelphirkalt »

Ygg2 wrote: post #59
benreesman wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haskell makes guarantees. Modern C++ makes predictions to within a quantifiable epsilon. Rust makes false promises in practical situations. It invented a notion of safety that is neither well posed, nor particularly useful, nor compatible with ergonomic and efficient computing. It's speciality is marketing and we already know the bounding box on its impact or relevance. "Vibe coding" will be a more colorful and bette…

> Rust makes false promises in practical situations. It invented a notion of safety that is neither well posed, nor particularly useful, nor compatible with ergonomic and efficient computing. Please stop. Rust's promise is very simple. You get safety without the tracing GC. It also gives you tools to implement your own safe abstraction on top of unsafe, but you are mostly on your own (miri, asan, and ubsan can still…

People state these things about Rust's own implementation (or one of the other gazillion safe langs) potentially not being safe all the time, but the difference to unsafe languages is, that once any bug is fixed, everyone profits from it being fixed in the implementation of Rust. Everyone who uses the language and updates to a newer version that is, which often goes without code changes or minimal changes for a project. Now compare that with unsafe languages. Every single project needs to "fix" the same kind of safety issues over and over again. The language implementation can do almost nothing, except change the language to disallow unsafe stuff, which is not done, because people like backwards compatibility too much.

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

#82

Post by kristoff_it »

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…

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

#83

Post by flohofwoe »

simonask wrote: post #74
flohofwoe wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> low level libraries in Zig, just as it is in C Did you write any Zig code yet? In terms of enforced correctness in the language (e.g. no integer promotion, no implicit 'dangerous' casts, null-safety, enforced error handling, etc...) and runtime safety (range-, nullptr-, integer-overflow-checks etc...), Zig is much closer to Rust than it is to C and C++. It "just" doesn't solve static memory safety and some (admitte…

I mean, there's no question that Zig, also in its current state, is vast improvement over C or even C++ - for the "small stuff". It is much more pleasant to use. But there is still the "big stuff" - the things that have a fundamental, architectural impact. Things like: Will my program be multithreaded? Will I have many systems that interact? Will my program be maximally memory-efficient? Do I have the capacity (or mo…

> Zig is better, yes, but not a paradigm shift.

But it doesn't have to be and it shouldn't. Rust also isn't a paradigm shift, it "just" solved static memory safety (admittedly a great engineering feat) but other languages solved memory safety too decades ago, just with more of it happening at runtime.

But in many other areas Rust copied too many bad ideas from C++ (and many of those "other things" Zig already does much better than Rust - but different people will have vastly different opinions about whether one solution is actually better than another - so discussions about those features usually run in circles).

There shouldn't be a single language that solves all problems - this will just result in stagnation, it's much better to have many languages to pick from - and even if they just differ in personal opinions of the language author of how to do things or entirely subjective 'syntax sugar' features. Competition is good, monocultures are bad.

> The most important consideration in any software project is managing architectural complexity

No language will help you managing "architectural complexity" in any meaningful way except by imposing tons of arbitrary restrictions which then get in the way for smaller projects that don't need much "architecture". We have plenty of "Enterprise-scale languages" already (Java, C#, Rust, C++, ...), what we need is more languages for small teams that don't get in the way of just getting shit done, since the really interesting and innovative stuff doesn't happen in enterprise environments but in small 'basement and bedroom teams' :)

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

#84

Post by pmarreck »

simonask wrote: post #37
jakobnissen wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I tend to actually disagree with this attitude, because I see writing documentation as really effective "rubber-ducking". If it's hard and time-consuming to properly document, it's probably hard to use, so extra effort should be spent to actually justify the design, not least to yourself in 6 months. If you can't justify it, it's probably wrong.

100%.

Similar to how TDD forces you to first figure out the API of your code due to the test code being its first client.

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

#85

Post by oblio »

felixgallo wrote: post #34
aDyslecticCrow wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ai is great at block comments, there is no excuse. Add to that a small anotated usage example written by a human and this whole post would have not existed. Lack of docs also cripple AI from understanding, so future adoption becomes even more bleak. If an api or library developer didnt bother doing even bare minimum docs, my confidence in the library drops aswell. Did they skip testing aswell? Ran the happy path for…

Zig is just getting started and came way after rust.

I like Zig, but if we look at the numbers, the difference is probably more to do with funding that anything:

Zig (programming language) - First appeared 8 February 2016; 9 years ago

Rust (programming language) - First appeared January 19, 2012; 13 years ago

Also, Zig at this point isn't really a brand new language anymore. I have comments on their issues dating back to 2018, so it's been a very active language since at least then.

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

#86

Post by 7bit »

jakobnissen wrote: post #17
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

Your argument implies that good documentation is not an improvement, which of course is wrong. It also belongs to the task of improving code. Why would you move away after half-assing the API, when you can add the docs and whole-ass it instead?

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

#87

Post by 7bit »

hardwaresofton wrote: post #22
jakobnissen wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

This is a good point, but one could make a point for the usefulness of documentation in “thinking like a user” which is a valuable exercise. I do very much prefer moving fast though, so I get it, docs-later is obviously a very valid way of doing things. If someone is excited about Zig and wanted to make a difference I guess it’s now obvious where they could have outsized impact!

Docs later is an okay approach, when you build something in a closed environment, where the only users know the code inside out.

But when working in open-source and your goal is to have people adopt your software, then it's a bad point and a lazy excuse.

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

#88

Post by maxbond »

wordofx wrote: post #70
geon wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can’t expect documentation this early. The new interface was just released.

So zig isn’t a serious language. It’s just some trash apis thrown together.

It's a serious language, it's just not a stable language yet.

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

#89

Post by pjmlp »

littlestymaar wrote: post #71
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.

The key problem with Zig nowadays is how much of its community and adoption is driven by anti-Rust sentiment. As a result, while Rust puts beginner onboarding and documentation at the center of its culture, as opposed to the “C neckbeard”'s culture, Zig is going the other way around. (Loris Cro being a key community figure isn't helping in any way, and it's a good remainder that if you don't clear up your community f…

Not only, the whole handmade movement puts me off.

It is the anti-intelectualism from Go culture, gone wild against C++, Rust, Swift, anything modern, or even tools, using game engines versus doing the whole computer from scratch for a game.

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

#90

Post by 7bit »

geon wrote: post #54
ulbu wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You can’t expect documentation this early. The new interface was just released.

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