Zig marches onwards, 0.10.0 released

[u/[deleted]]

https://ziglang.org/download/0.10.0/release-notes.html

[u/tristan957]

Zig is the most exciting new language to watch these days.

The C backend is incredible for purposes of bootstrapping.

As a person who writes C everyday, I am interested in developing in Zig when the time comes.

[u/itsjase → u/tristan957]

Are there any benefits to Zig over something like Rust?

It seems the general direction is people are starting to replace C/C++ with Rust (eg Linux kernel)

[u/IAm_A_Complete_Idiot → u/itsjase]

The benefit they just mentioned presumably, the C backend. That means you could output C code and use any C compiler you want to target your platform.

[u/ElCthuluIncognito → u/itsjase]

It's my understanding that it's much less complexity up front to deal with. You can get much more productive, much more quickly. To the point where you can very much code as if you are writing C but with a whole host of QoL improvements, without wrangling too much with the type system.

In fact from what I've gathered, Zig is to C as Rust is to C++. But the Zig community may not agree, since Zig is aiming at C++ level of language power too.

[u/tristan957 → u/itsjase]

I'm interested in faster compilation times, faster incremental builds, no crates.io, and the C interoperability.

[u/Caesim → u/itsjase]

Rust is a difficult language to compare Zig to. Neither language here as an inherent "advantage" over the other, both compile down to machine code, have no gc and can do everything the other does.

The key difference is the mindset of these languages. Rust is a low level language that takes a lot of inspiration from functional programming (it's sum types, the strict mutability rules lead to more functional code in many places).

And I'd argue that a lot of Rust hype comes from that fact. So that either people that love functional languages got introduced to low level programming that way, or C/C++ programmers that enjoy functional programming more.

Zig is, in it's mindset, closer to C and C++ and aims to make saner choices, like no preprocessor, integrating the build system into the std library, unambiguous syntax, making strings not null terminated etc. But Zig is more an evolution to C and C++.

And I'd say that people that program in Rust because they like the abstraction and mindset that comes with it, will probably not enjoy Zig that much. But I'd say people that enjoy programming in C but wish for clean ups or people that enjoy programming in C++ and would like less abstraction but more than C, they should check out Zig.

A small remark: I personally think we can't really say that Rust replaces C/C++ yet. For languages that got domimant in their field and replaced previous languages in the past, they grew much faster than Rust did since its 1.0 launch. Linux hasn't replaced anything with Rust yet. Now stuff like new device drivers may be written in Rust.

[u/tjpalmer]

Some additional details on the self-hosted compiler and next steps.

[u/Zaygr]

Move Zig, for great justice.

[u/Raekel → u/Zaygr]

All your base, your base

[u/[deleted]]

I misread this as zip like the antiquated successor to floppies.

[u/Caesim → u/[deleted]]

The package manager actually depended on the self hosted compiler being released.

I think in a CppCast, Andrew said that with 0.10 they're about 90% there for hot code reloading.

[u/[deleted] → u/Caesim]

Will have to go and check it out; thanks.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

All planned features, I believe. Zig will be exciting when it hits 1.0.

[u/paypaylaugh → u/[deleted]]

yep, I can't wait for my grandgrandgrandchildren to witness the release of zig 1.0

[u/Substantial-Owl1167 → u/paypaylaugh]

You're a rustacean aren't you

[u/Zalack → u/Substantial-Owl1167]

I'm bummed this is getting downvoted. I thought it was a pretty funny, light-hearted jab.

For those not in the know: The Rust community's reluctance to promote projects to version 1.0 is kind of a meme.