Interview with Zig language creator Andrew Kelley [video]

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logicchains ◴[27 Aug 20 12:40 UTC] No.24293046[source]▶

I work in HFT, and one of the key concerns when writing low-latency code is "is this code allocating memory, and if so, how can I stop it?" Zig is the perfect language for this use case as none of the standard library implicitly allocates, rather for anything that allocates, the caller must pass in an allocator. The stdlib also provides a handy arena allocator, which is often the best choice.

This is a huge advantage over C++ and Rust, because it makes it much harder for e.g. the intern to write code that repeatedly creates a vector or dynamically allocated string in a loop. Or to use something like std::unordered_map or std::deque that allocates wantonly.

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1. littlestymaar ◴[27 Aug 20 14:16 UTC] No.24293919[source]▶

>>24293046 #

[deleted]

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2. ◴[27 Aug 20 14:35 UTC] No.24294076[source]▶

>>24293919 (TP) #

3. logicchains ◴[27 Aug 20 14:45 UTC] No.24294162[source]▶

>>24293919 (TP) #

I didn't say I actually use it, I said it's the perfect language for that use case. In practice there are many other factors that determine whether a language is adopted, e.g. library availability, compiler maturity, and the fact that it's not simple to integrate a new language into an existing codebase of very many lines of C++.

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4. littlestymaar ◴[27 Aug 20 15:00 UTC] No.24294327[source]▶

>>24294162 #

Thanks, I was very afraid for a moment. In fact, I recently worked for a company which started using Rust in a mission critical setting back in… 2013 (yes, long before the language was stable and its future secured). Fortunately it worked, but still, it was far from a safe move.

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5. The_rationalist ◴[27 Aug 20 18:01 UTC] No.24296566{3}[source]▶

>>24294327 #

With retrospective, do you regret choosing rust? It's poor ecosystem with low human resources can kill a startup.

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6. littlestymaar ◴[27 Aug 20 20:22 UTC] No.24298192{4}[source]▶

>>24296566 #

I didn't make the pick (and I wouldn't have picked Rust then, I still judge this move as way too risky), and I merely worked as a contractor there and the project was already 5 years old.

That being said, a few notes on Rust on this project:

Cons:

- finding people proficient in Rust was a challenge (but that's why I go hired, so for me that was a plus;).

- in the first few years of the project, keeping up with language changes (before Rust 1.0 and even after because the project had been using nightly Rust until 2018) added.

Neural:

- the library ecosystem was nonexistent at the beginning, but because Rust has good C interop, the project just used C libraries for different things. Some where replaced by pure Rust ones later on, some didn't.

Pro: (Note: the project had important performance requirements (regarding CPU and memory consumption) so had Rust not been chosen, the project would have been written in C++.)

- When your Rust program compiles, it never crashes (except on an assert)

- I've spent exactly 0 minutes in a debugger on that project

- I've done massive refactoring without issues: you just fix the compiler errors (which are now extraordinarily clear!), you recompile and it works.

So overall, the Rust bet was a big success for this project! But you're right: the company wasn't a start-up and the company's ability to count on an existing team was vital here because hiring a new Rust dev would have been impossible in the first few years. With Rust becoming more and more popular each year, the hiring issue shouldn't be as acute right now (well, especially since Mozilla fired dozens of Rust-fluent developers earlier this month…)

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