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200 points jorangreef | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.204s | source
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pron ◴[] No.24292760[source]
I think that Zig's simplicity hides how revolutionary it is, both in design and in potential. It reminded me of my impression of Scheme when I first learned it over twenty years ago. You can learn the language in a day, but it takes a while to realize how exceptionally powerful it is. But it's not just its radical design that's interesting from an academic perspective; I also think that its practical goals align with mine. My primary programming language these days is C++, and Zig is the first low-level language that attempts to address all of the three main problems I see with it: language complexity, compilation speed, and safety.

In particular, it has two truly remarkable features that no other well-known low-level language -- C, C++, Ada, and Rust -- have or can ever have: lack of macros and lack of generics (and the associated concepts/typeclasses) [1]. These are very important features because they have a big impact on language complexity. Despite these features, Zig can do virtually everything those languages do with macros [2] and/or generics (including concepts/typeclasses), and with the same level of compile-time type safety and performance: their uses become natural applications of Zig's "superfeature" -- comptime.

Other languages -- like Nim, D, C++ and Rust also have a feature similar to Zig's comptime or are gradually getting there -- but what Zig noticed was that this simple feature makes several other complex and/or potentially harmful features redundant. Antoine de Saint-Exupery said that "perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." I think that Zig, like Scheme -- and yes, there are others -- is close to that minimalist vision of perfection.

What a truly inspiring language. Rather than asking how we could make C++'s general philosophy work better as another increasingly famous language does, IMO, it asks how we could reshape low-level programming in a way that's a more radical break with the past. I think it's a better question to ask. Now all there's left to hope for is that Zig gets to 1.0 and gains some traction. I, for one, would love to find a suitable alternative to C++, and I believe Zig is the first language that could achieve that in a way that suits my particular taste.

[1]: I guess C has the second feature, but it loses both expressivity and performance because of it.

[2]: Without the less desirable things people can do with macros.

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dom96 ◴[] No.24293479[source]
> Other languages -- like Nim, D, C++ and Rust also have a feature similar to Zig's comptime or are gradually getting there -- but what Zig noticed was that this simple feature makes several other complex and/or potentially harmful features redundant.

I'm curious where this impression of Zig comes from, as this is precisely what Nim has set out to do: a small core extensible via metaprogramming. Are there features that Nim implements which go against this premise? if so, what are they? :)

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1. ◴[] No.24293531[source]