Interview with Zig language creator Andrew Kelley [video]

Zig is appealing to me, but I wonder whether time spent mastering Zig would be better spent mastering C.

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?

<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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"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!).