Interview with Zig language creator Andrew Kelley [video]

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.

> 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.

True. On the other hand, Zig makes a deliberate decision not to bother itself with memory safety too much, so its a win some, loose some sort of situation.

> On the other hand, Zig makes a deliberate decision not to bother itself with memory safety too much

This is not true. Zig places a strong emphasis on memory safety, it just does so in a way that's very different from either Java's or Rust's. I wrote more about this here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24293329

I meant a borrow checker, which I assumed was clear from what I was replying to. Yes, Zig does do runtime checks in dev builds and I did not mean to imply otherwise, I don't think the runtime checks provide the same set of benefits.

Just so we're clear, I like Zig :-)

> I don't think the runtime checks provide the same set of benefits.

Of course not, but that doesn't mean Zig is less effective at achieving correctness. It just does so in a different way -- it trades sound guarantees for less sound ones and a simpler language with a faster cycle. Is one better than the other? Hard to say. Only empirical study could settle that.