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?
The thing that keeps me from loving Zig is https://github.com/ziglang/zig/issues/234
I am too shell shocked to keep thinking of strings as u8[] it’s 2023 for god’s sake.
Big oof.
That issue was marked as resolved but what was the resolution?
Won’t fix
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.
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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?
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.
