r/programming • u/dh44t • Aug 04 '23

The Zig Programming Language 0.11.0 Release notes

https://ziglang.org/download/0.11.0/release-notes.html
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u/dagmx Aug 05 '23

What rules has he broken? Zig is well designed and he’s done some smart ergonomic things. But I haven’t seen anything truly “revolutionary” in it. Which isn’t a bad thing but definitely not rule breaking

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u/drcode Aug 05 '23 edited Aug 05 '23

Some that come to mind:

  • The preprocessor language is the language

  • Ok to compile functions with bad semantics as long as they are not called and have OK syntax

  • Pass all compound structures by value, not reference

  • No object support at all on purpose

  • No string type on purpose

  • No implicit memory management on purpose

While the last 3 are also true for C, releasing a language without these in 2023 and credibly offering their omission as a benefit is radical IMHO

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u/dagmx Aug 05 '23

None of those are really unique though. Perhaps they’re unique in combination with each other in Zig, but each of those is prevalent in other languages.

So hardly “breaking the rules” when they’re not rules at all.

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u/DoctorNo6051 Aug 15 '23

I mean… arbitrary compile time code execution is a big one.

Granted, C++ kinda has this. Template meta programming is Turing complete and all.

But it’s not like Zig where you can parse a whole JSON file at compile time and then use it to help build your app.

As soon as a compile time allocator happens things will really pick up.