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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: 0.195s | 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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IshKebab ◴[17 Nov 25 08:29 UTC] No.45951799[source]▶
I guess comptime is a little different but yeah I wouldn't say it fundamentally changes how you think about software.

I wouldn't say that about OCaml either really though. It's not wildly different in the way that e.g. Lean's type system, or Rust's borrow checker or Haskell's purity is.

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vlovich123 ◴[17 Nov 25 09:25 UTC] No.45952085[source]▶
D has similar comptime capabilities if I recall correctly and proceeds Zig by almost 2 decades or so.
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IshKebab ◴[17 Nov 25 11:11 UTC] No.45952592[source]▶
I don't think it's the same. You can do template metaprogramming, but Zig lets you use Zig itself which is a lot nicer.

I'm not a D programmer though so I could be wrong.

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1. vlovich123 ◴[17 Nov 25 17:15 UTC] No.45955656[source]▶
I’m not a D programmer but I remember talks by Alexandrescu where he was arguing for this capability in C++ and ultimately one of his stated reasons why he switched from C++ to D

Look up static if - AST manipulation in native D code.