5 ms·

Zig is a general purpose programming language, so it's actually easier to answer the question, what kinds of programming are not a use case for Zig!

Santosh83 6y ago
And what would those be, in your opinion?
- dnautics 6y ago
  writing code for gpus, writing "code" for FPGAs/ASICs, writing excel macros, writing MAX presentations... Probably most websites (not counting any WASM layers...)
- AndyKelley 6y ago
  There are a few categories: * Things that would be in scope, but the Zig project is not yet capable of supporting. An example of this would be compiling stuff to GPUs, e.g. SPIR-V. Such things are planned but not implemented. https://github.com/ziglang/zig/issues/2683 https://github.com/ziglang/zig/issues/2683 * Things that will never be in scope. An example of this would be code obfuscation, which is a use case the Zig project does not recognize. * Object formats that are drastically incompatible with the von Neumann architecture. It would be infeasible for Zig code to be compiled to such things. For example, attempting to compile to CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). I think that's it. Anything else would be supported, provided there were enough people interested in providing maintenance for the respective parts of the codebase.
rawoke083600 6y ago
Maybe it's a stupid question and I should read the docs... but is there any "multi-core or concurrency paradigms" in Zig ?
- dnautics 6y ago
  You have to spawn a thread using a method of your choice. Once you've done thar though zig gives you some very nice async primitives that let you reenter functions and do scheduling/event loops easily, and it's agnostic; the calls autoconvert to blocking if you don't have async. There was a recent demo of task sharing in zig and comparing to go and rust: (https://youtu.be/UaF6-5BmX2I&t=1h10m https://youtu.be/UaF6-5BmX2I&t=1h10m) I've even plugged zig into another highly concurrent vm and gotten it to be a "good citizen": https://youtu.be/l848TOmI6LI https://youtu.be/l848TOmI6LI (these constructs are running concurrently in test and CI so I know they are robust)
anta40 6y ago
"what kinds of programming are not a use case for Zig!" Mobile app dev? PS: My daily work involves writing Java/Kotlin for Android, and just started learning Flutter for cross platform mobile app dev. I mean, if one day Zig support those, that's definitely super awesome. Of course I'm aware that more menpower on that direction is needed :)
- AndyKelley 6y ago
  https://github.com/MasterQ32/ziggy-on-android https://github.com/MasterQ32/ziggy-on-android https://forum.nim-lang.org/t/4840 https://forum.nim-lang.org/t/4840
  - Oreb 6y ago
    How about iOS? I'd love to give Zig a try, but I need to be able to build static libraries for both iOS and Android.
qaq 6y ago
Well given current state of things Web Dev is def not a use case for now.
The_Colonel 6y ago
I know that as a language author it's natural to assert "it can be used for (almost) everything", but it's not a good strategy for adoption - plenty of languages can claim the same after all. It's better to mention in which areas it really excels, where it beats the competition hands down.
discreteevent 6y ago
If I like (for whatever reasons) to primarily program in a classical OOP style with objects that have encapsulated state and can be late-bound then at the moment it looks like that this would not be a great use case for Zig. Would this be true? (BTW I really like Zig's philosophy in general, just saying that this might not be a great use case for it)

Santosh83 6y ago

And what would those be, in your opinion?

dnautics 6y ago
writing code for gpus, writing "code" for FPGAs/ASICs, writing excel macros, writing MAX presentations... Probably most websites (not counting any WASM layers...)
AndyKelley 6y ago
There are a few categories: * Things that would be in scope, but the Zig project is not yet capable of supporting. An example of this would be compiling stuff to GPUs, e.g. SPIR-V. Such things are planned but not implemented. https://github.com/ziglang/zig/issues/2683 https://github.com/ziglang/zig/issues/2683 * Things that will never be in scope. An example of this would be code obfuscation, which is a use case the Zig project does not recognize. * Object formats that are drastically incompatible with the von Neumann architecture. It would be infeasible for Zig code to be compiled to such things. For example, attempting to compile to CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). I think that's it. Anything else would be supported, provided there were enough people interested in providing maintenance for the respective parts of the codebase.

rawoke083600 6y ago

Maybe it's a stupid question and I should read the docs... but is there any "multi-core or concurrency paradigms" in Zig ?

dnautics 6y ago
You have to spawn a thread using a method of your choice. Once you've done thar though zig gives you some very nice async primitives that let you reenter functions and do scheduling/event loops easily, and it's agnostic; the calls autoconvert to blocking if you don't have async. There was a recent demo of task sharing in zig and comparing to go and rust: (https://youtu.be/UaF6-5BmX2I&t=1h10m https://youtu.be/UaF6-5BmX2I&t=1h10m) I've even plugged zig into another highly concurrent vm and gotten it to be a "good citizen": https://youtu.be/l848TOmI6LI https://youtu.be/l848TOmI6LI (these constructs are running concurrently in test and CI so I know they are robust)

anta40 6y ago

"what kinds of programming are not a use case for Zig!" Mobile app dev? PS: My daily work involves writing Java/Kotlin for Android, and just started learning Flutter for cross platform mobile app dev. I mean, if one day Zig support those, that's definitely super awesome. Of course I'm aware that more menpower on that direction is needed :)

AndyKelley 6y ago
https://github.com/MasterQ32/ziggy-on-android https://github.com/MasterQ32/ziggy-on-android https://forum.nim-lang.org/t/4840 https://forum.nim-lang.org/t/4840
- Oreb 6y ago
  How about iOS? I'd love to give Zig a try, but I need to be able to build static libraries for both iOS and Android.

qaq 6y ago

Well given current state of things Web Dev is def not a use case for now.

The_Colonel 6y ago

I know that as a language author it's natural to assert "it can be used for (almost) everything", but it's not a good strategy for adoption - plenty of languages can claim the same after all. It's better to mention in which areas it really excels, where it beats the competition hands down.

discreteevent 6y ago

If I like (for whatever reasons) to primarily program in a classical OOP style with objects that have encapsulated state and can be late-bound then at the moment it looks like that this would not be a great use case for Zig. Would this be true? (BTW I really like Zig's philosophy in general, just saying that this might not be a great use case for it)