I have been reading about this new language for a while. It’s a C competitor, very slim language with very interesting choices, like supporting cross platform compilation out of the box, supports compiling C/C++ code (and can be used as a drop in replacement for C) to the point in can be used as replacement of ©make and executables are very small.

But, like all languages, adoption is what makes the difference. And we don’t know how it goes.

Is anyone actually using Zig right now? Any thoughts?

  • CameronDev@programming.dev
    1·
    3 years ago

    I’ve heard of it, and don’t know what the point is.

    In zigs defence, I felt the same way about rust a few years back as well.

    I wonder what the killer feature for zig is. At least rust promises safer code, what does zig promise?

    • jeffhykin@lemm.ee
      2·
      3 years ago

      The killer feature (IMO) is automatic conversion of C code to Zig code (transpiling). E.g. take a C project, convert it all to Zig, and even if you don’t transpile, you still get really nice compat (include C headers just like a normal input without converting). Getting a medium sized C project converted to Zig in 1 day or 1 week, then incrementally improving from there, is really enticing IMO especially considering the alternative of rewriting in Rust could be months of very hard conversion work. Transpiling isn’t perfect but it seems to be a 97% soltuion.

      The second advantage seems to be easy unsafe work.

      BTW I don’t really use Zig, and I still prefer Rust, but those are the reasons I think it has a niche of its own.

      • CameronDev@programming.dev
        1·
        3 years ago

        I wonder if owners of large C projects are that keen to move off C to zip though? I guess time will tell. I do a fair bit of C, and I can’t see us risking switching to Zig, unless there was something else that made it really worth it. I should probably have a look at Zig if I have spare time, maybe there is a killer feature we aren’t seeing yet.

        Easy interop with legacy code is how kotlin took off, so maybe it will work out?

        • Blackthorn@programming.devOP
          1·
          3 years ago

          My understanding is that this is possible: you should be able to take a C project, add a build.zig file and under the hood the system is calling clang to compile the C project. HOWEVER, you can now add a .zig source file, compile that in zig and link together with the output of the C compiler into an executable. If this is actually true, I can definitely see the attractiveness of the language.

    • Chrobin@discuss.tchncs.de
      1·
      3 years ago

      I think the main advantages over C are:

      • better tooling
      • modern syntax
      • by default, pointers must be non-null. You have to specify if you want to use null pointers
      • better exception handling using the functional style of exceptions-as-values

      There are probably more, but those are the ones I remember.

  • Vorpal@programming.devEnglish
    0·
    3 years ago

    I really don’t see what niche it is trying to fill that isn’t already occupied.

    Rust is as successful as it is because it found a previously unoccupied niche: safe systems programming without garbage collector and with high level abstractions that (mostly) optimise away.

    I don’t think “better C” is a big enough niche to be of interest to enough people for it to gain a critical mass. I certainly have very little interest in it myself.

    • voxel@sopuli.xyz
      1·
      3 years ago

      comptime is a huge killer feature for me. I used it to generate ARM lookup tables at compile time and it’s amazing, it also removes the need for generics as types are just arguments
      for example the Vec function accepts a type as and returns a struct that can hold arbitrary amounts of said type on the heap.
      I eventually switched to rust + proc macros tho (zig solution was MUCH cleaner!) because both ZLS and the Zig compiler are terrible and still needs a lot of work.

  • jeffhykin@lemm.ee
    0·
    3 years ago

    Yes some people are using it! I think this video gives a good idea of adoption since its about a company’s experience using zig: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxx5_Xaw7zU

    I considered Zig and Nim as kind of irrelevant given Rust is being adopted, but this video, specifically the C compat, changed my mind, at least for Zig.