Zig is hard but worth it

(ratfactor.com)

401 points signa11 | 1 comments | 01 Jun 23 10:44 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source

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jsheard ◴[01 Jun 23 12:51 UTC] No.36150389[source]▶

I get what Zig is going for in making all operations as explicit as possible, but I fear that it's going to turn away fields like graphics and game development where it would be a good fit except for the lack of operator overloading forcing you to go back to C-style math function spaghetti. It's all fun and games until what should be a straightforward math expression turns into 8 nested function calls.

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flohofwoe ◴[01 Jun 23 15:09 UTC] No.36152172[source]▶

>>36150389 #

Zig has a builtin @Vector type that might come in handy for most cases where in C++ a math library with operator overloading would be used:

https://www.godbolt.org/z/7zbxnncv6

...maybe one day there will also be a @Matrix builtin.

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1. Conscat ◴[01 Jun 23 17:31 UTC] No.36154505[source]▶

>>36152172 #

It's a LOT worse than C++ SIMD libraries.

In C++ (EVE, Vc, Highway, xsimd, stdlib), you can specify the ABI of a vector, which allows you to make platform specific optimizations in multifunctions. Or you can write vector code of a lowest-common-denominator width (like 16 bytes, rather than specifying the number of lanes), which runs the same on NEON and SSE2. Or you can write SIMD that is automatically natively optimized for just a single platform. These features are available on every notable C++ SIMD library, and they're basically indispensable for serious performance code.

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