Open-source Zig book

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.

Rust is the small, beautiful language hiding inside of Modern C++. Ownership isn't new. It's the core tenet of RAII. Rust just pulls it out of the backwards-compatible kitchen sink and builds it into the type system. Rust is worth learning just so that you can fully experience that lens of software development.

Zig is Modern C development encapsulated in a new language. Most importantly, it dodges Rust and C++'s biggest mistake, not passing allocators into containers and functions. All realtime development has to rewrite their entire standard libraries, like with the EASTL.

On top of the great standard library design, you get comptime, native build scripts, (err)defer, error sets, builtin simd, and tons of other small but important ideas. It's just a really good language that knows exactly what it is and who its audience is.

Zig is nice too, but it's not that.

Zig on the other specifically addresses syntax shortcomings in part of C. And it does it well. That claim of rust making C more safe because it’s more readable applies to Zig more than it does to Rust.

I feel like the reason the rust zealots lobby like crazy to embed rust everywhere is twofold. One is that they genuinely believe in it and the other is that they know that if other languages that address one of the main rust claims without all the cruft gains popularity they lose the chance of being permanently embdedded in places like the kernel. Because once they’re in it’s a decade long job market

But regardless of how much one likes Zig, it addresses none of the problems that Rust seeks to solve. It's not a replacement for Rust at all, and isn't suitable for any of the domains where Rust excels.

That's a pretty bold claim since Zig is specifically designed for systems programming, low level stuff, network services, databases (think Tigerbeetle). It's not memory safe like Rust is, but it comes with constructs that make it simple to build largely memory safe programs.

There is some overlap but that's still different. The Zig approach to memory safety is to make everything explicit, it is good in a constrained environment typical of embedded programming. The Rust approach is the opposite, you don't really see what is happening, but there are mechanisms to keep your safe. It is good for complex software with lots of moving parts in an unconstrained environment, like a browser.

For a footgun analogy, one will hand you a gun that will never go off unless you aim and pull the trigger, so you can shoot your foot, but no sane person will. It is a good sniper rifle. The Rust gun can go off at any time, even when you don't expect it, but it is designed in such a way that it will never happen when it is pointed at your foot, even if you aim it there. It is a good machine gun.

Pray tell, with Rust already being used in kernels, drivers, and embedded what makes Zig better suited for low-level systems?

More chance to explode a UB in your hand? For that, there is C.

You can use Rust in kernel/embedded code, you can also use C++ (I did) and even Java! but most prefer to use C, and I think that Zig is a better alternative to C for those in the field.

There is still one huge drawback with Zig and that's maturity. Zig is still in beta, and the closest you get to the metal, the more it tends to matter. Hardware projects typically have way longer life cycles and the general philosophy is "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". Rust is not as mature as C by far, there is a reason C is still king, but at least, it is out of beta and is seeing significant production use.

I remember when I talk about Zig to the CTO of the embedded branch of my company. His reaction was telling. "I am happy to hear someone mention Zig, it is a very interesting language and it is definitely on my watch list, but not mature enough to invest in it". He was happy that I mentioned Zig because in the company, the higher ups are all about Rust because of the hype, even though we do very little of if BTW, it is still mostly C and C++. And yeah, hype is important, customers heard about Rust as some magical tech that will make the code bug-free, they didn't hear about Zig, so Rust sells better. In the end, they go for C anyways.