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Interview with Zig language creator Andrew Kelley [video]

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200 points jorangreef | 4 comments | 27 Aug 20 11:10 UTC | HN request time: 0.015s | source
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lokl ◴[27 Aug 20 13:21 UTC] No.24293396[source]▶
Zig is appealing to me, but I wonder whether time spent mastering Zig would be better spent mastering C.
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jorangreef ◴[27 Aug 20 15:38 UTC] No.24294737[source]▶
The first rule of C is that no one masters C, but you could try anyway and still have time to master Zig in a matter of weeks, which is a rounding error. Given that both offer a C compatible ABI, what would serve your projects better?
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1. cmrdporcupine ◴[27 Aug 20 15:43 UTC] No.24294781[source]▶
<rant-time>

I can't help but feel like in our industry C is successful (vs its 80s competition of Pascal/Modula-2, or Ada etc.) partially because of some of the same reasons that Git is successful now. Yes, it is powerful and flexible; but also in some ways unnecessarily arcane and 'dangerous' and _this gives the user a feeling of cleverness_ that is seductive to software engineers.

Put another way: Most of us enjoy the mental stimulation of programming, and we enjoy the mental challenges (in general). C makes us feel clever. Witness the "obfuscated C programming contest" etc.

Same thing that has led to nonsense 'brain teaser' whiteboard-algorithm tests at job interviews. IMHO it's in many cases for the benefit of the interviewer's ego, not the company or the interviewee ("gotcha! no job for you!").

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2. jorangreef ◴[27 Aug 20 15:49 UTC] No.24294845[source]▶
"Put another way: Most of us enjoy the mental stimulation of programming, and we enjoy the mental challenges (in general). C makes us feel clever. Witness the "obfuscated C programming contest" etc."

Yep, only C makes me feel stupid (but I enjoy that experience too!).

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3. cmrdporcupine ◴[27 Aug 20 15:52 UTC] No.24294884[source]▶
Oh don't get me wrong, I'm a philosophy major drop-out, not a CS student. :-) I have never gotten off on clever-C, and it makes me feel stupid, which yeah, isn't awful either (humbling).

Luckily my day-job has nothing to do with mental gymnastics even though I'm a software engineer at Google and work in plenty of low-level stuff. Most sensible software development bears little resemblance to the stuff on whiteboards in coding interviews etc.

After 20 years of this I know the right thing is to reach for a library, and if that doesn't exist, then reach for Knuth or some other reference rather than try to write it myself from scratch.

4. PaulDavisThe1st ◴[27 Aug 20 18:25 UTC] No.24296848[source]▶
Given that you can "write Fortran in any language", I find this analysis unlikely.

I much prefer writing Python or Lisp code than C++, but I can't do my job in Python or Lisp code, so I write C++.