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228 points Retro_Dev | 2 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
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blippage ◴[] No.44462083[source]
I tried Zig some time ago to use with microcontrollers. It has a generator for the pins, which was nice. But subsequent versions broke as Zig changed syntax. So I started going down the rabbit-hole (it needed a newer version of llvm, for example) until I eventually decided that the game wasn't worth the candle.

The fact that another breaking change has been introduced confirms my suspicion that Zig is not ready for primetime.

My conclusion is to just use C. For low-level programming it's very hard to improve on C. There is not likely to be any killer feature that some other contender will allow you to write the same code in a fifth of the lines nor make the code any more understandable.

Yes, C may have its quirky behaviour that people gnash their teeth over. But ultimately, it's not that bad.

If you want to use a better C, use C++. C++ is perfectly fine for using with microcontrollers, for example. Now get back to work!

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eddythompson80 ◴[] No.44462322[source]
> The fact that another breaking change has been introduced confirms my suspicion that Zig is not ready for primetime.

Huh, it was the 0.14 version number for me.

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dtech ◴[] No.44462350[source]
0.x doesn't say as much as it used to 20 years ago, many fine projects keep it for way too long.
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eddythompson80 ◴[] No.44462473[source]
Zig has a pretty well documented 1.0 goals. It was the first thing I heard about zig from Andrew about. https://youtu.be/5eL_LcxwwHg
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1. arp242 ◴[] No.44462756[source]
Yes, that was the point. To understand what that "0.14" means, we need to know those "well documented 1.0 goals" and some hour long YouTube video. That is, merely the "0.14 version number" without context is not enough, like your previous comment said.
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2. eddythompson80 ◴[] No.44462767[source]
You look at the version, the milestones https://github.com/ziglang/zig/milestones, and it makes sense. The YouTube video is just more proof. Picking up a 0.14 software without looking the most basic thing about it like “oh, what kind of 0.14 is this” then complaining that “it’s not ready for prime time” is odd behavior