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Open-source Zig book

(www.zigbook.net)
692 points rudedogg | 1 comments | 16 Nov 25 19:44 UTC | HN request time: 0.208s | source
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poly2it ◴[17 Nov 25 06:14 UTC] No.45951222[source]▶
> Learning Zig is not just about adding a language to your resume. It is about fundamentally changing how you think about software.

I'm not sure what they expect, but to me Zig looks very much like C with a modern standard lib and slightly different syntax. This isn't groundbreaking, not a thought paradigm which should be that novel to most system engineers like for example OCaml could be. Stuff like this alienates people who want a technical justification for the use of a language.

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1. pron ◴[17 Nov 25 11:37 UTC] No.45952740[source]▶
Zig is so novel that it's hard to find any language like it. Its similarity to C is superficial. AFAIK, it is the first language ever to rely on partial evaluation so extensively. Of course, partial evaluation itself is not new at all, but neither were touchscreens when the iPhone came out. The point wasn't that it had a touchscreen, but that it had almost nothing but. The manner and extent of Zig's use of partial evaluation are unprecedented. I have nothing against OCaml, but it is a variant of ML, a 1970s language, that many undergrads were taught at university in the nineties.

I'm not saying everyone should like Zig, but its design is revolutionary:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45852774