Zig is hard but worth it

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.

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

> 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.

Agreed. Especially on a formatter. The number of code review comments it cuts out is incredibly time and energy saving.

> 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

In order to get into production? yes. there are minimum requirements that must be met. those are higher now than in the past, because of lessons learned the hard way. those problems have been solved (for some value of solved) in existing ecosystems -- a new language wont change the need for them to be solved.

it shatters the dream of hacking up something on a weekend and having it turn into a hit success, but it also removes the case of hacking up something in 10 days and suffering the consequences for the next 30 years.

Until they have what you mentioned, the languages aren't ready for large scale use -- they need to grow into it. They can be useful prior to that -- enthusiasts and early adopters can reap what benefits are provided. That adoption is what fuels the development of things like a standard code formatter.

edit: fixed omission of a unit of time after '30'

Makes me so sad that I can't just code up a parser and have a useable language. I have a lot of ideas, but heck, just syntax highlighting is... I don't know where to begin. And auto-completions. I need a tool that does 90% of that like PegJS or other parser-generators do for the parsing part. Don't see why a parser-generator can't also spit out an LSP. And if it knows what tokens are valid next, it should be able to generate completion suggestions. And if you have an AST, you can probably format the code half decently. And then I imagine it's possible to have a semi-universal package manager, I don't know why we need one per language, really. Aren't they all "put some code in some predefined location, and resolve these dependencies with semver please"? Maybe some extra junk for precompiled deps but still.