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Zig is hard but worth it

(ratfactor.com)
401 points signa11 | 5 comments | 01 Jun 23 10:44 UTC | HN request time: 1.038s | source
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latch ◴[01 Jun 23 13:19 UTC] No.36150665[source]▶
I've now written a lot of zig code (http.zig, websocket.zig, log.zig, zuckdb.zig, etc.) I think Zig falls into an "easy to learn, average/hard to master" category.

Some insiders underestimate the effort required for newcomers to build non-trivial things. I think this is because some of that complexity has to do with things like poor documentation, inconsistent stdlib, incompatible releases, slow release cycle, lack of package manager, etc. For an insider living and breathing Zig, not only aren't these huge challenges, they aren't really "Zig" - they are just transient growing pains. For someone getting started though, the current state of Zig is Zig.

I wish Zig had a polished package manager (there's one in the current development branch, but you don't as much use it as fight it). They could then move some of the less polished code into official experimental packages, helping to set expectations and maybe focus the development efforts.

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zoogeny ◴[01 Jun 23 14:07 UTC] No.36151206[source]▶
I've lately thought that a package manager is as essential to a new language as a standard library. I would also add a LSP and standard code formatter to that list.

It is a bit unfortunate because all of the above is a pretty tall order. We're getting to the point that new languages are expected to boil the ocean by the time they reach 1.0

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1. arp242 ◴[01 Jun 23 14:41 UTC] No.36151679[source]▶
Zig has a pretty decent LSP.

I'm not so sure a package manager is really all that essential; it can certainly be convenient but especially in the space Zig is looking at it's pretty workable without one (without complex deep dependency trees you can use git submodules or just copy a directory). Or let me put it this way: I never really missed a package manager in Zig.

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2. ReleaseCandidat ◴[01 Jun 23 14:57 UTC] No.36151940[source]▶
> I'm not so sure a package manager is really all that essential;

For open source software (libraries or programs, that depend on other libraries or programs), it is essential (if you're not distributing single functions like with Unison). For closed source it doesn't matter that much.

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3. arp242 ◴[01 Jun 23 15:04 UTC] No.36152075[source]▶
"cp -r ~/some-lib ~/my-project/" works well enough if some-lib doesn't have dependencies on its own. Or git submodules if you want something a bit more fancy. I sometimes do this even for languages with package managers, as it avoids a world of complexity.

Obviously a package manager is useful, but Zig is relatively low-level and long dependency chains are much less common than in e.g. Python, Ruby, and of course NodeJS. So I'd argue it's not essential. All the other things mentioned in the to top comment are far bigger issues IMO.

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4. tuckerpo ◴[01 Jun 23 15:33 UTC] No.36152608{4}[source]▶
Why? A submodule can be frozen at a given commit. They're trivially updated or rolled-back, too.
5. BaculumMeumEst ◴[01 Jun 23 19:30 UTC] No.36156168[source]▶
> I'm not so sure a package manager is really all that essential

I agree with you, but this is subjective. Not having a package manager will probably turn off many from the language. But it’s OK for the Zig folks to make a call that a lot of people won’t agree with if it doesn’t fit their vision of the language.