> C clearly needs a AST-based macros, not a whole new language to replace it. But that "whole new language" is probably smaller than just AST macros for C. And

> C clearly needs a AST-based macros, not a whole new language to replace it. But that "whole new language" is probably smaller than just AST macros for C. And C's problems aren't solved just by fixing macros (I think AST macros are a horrible feature in almost any language that isn't a Lisp; I see them as a sign that the language designers just gave up). > Undefined behavior comes from the fact that C is machine-independent assembler True, but that's almost never a valuable thing these days; you lose portability and get little in return other than a somewhat smaller compiler. > it's clearly not expressive enough It's at least as expressive as any other low-level language. Any C++/Rust program -- with generics, concepts, destructors, async, traits, macros -- could be translated to an equivalent Zig program that's at worst no longer than some (small) constant multiple of the original. That's not true for C (at least not without hurting performance). > and there're safer languages either Low-level? Not so sure. The goal is a language that makes it easy to write correct programs, not "a safe language". I'm not sure there are languages that do that better. > I don't buy this "worse is better" argument either It's an "it's just better" argument. Good design is not about picking arbitrary things and making them more convenient, but about spending a certain budget in a way that yields a good gestalt. > It's not rocket science to come with a syntax which would avoid that. Sure, but you can add that syntax at any time. It's not urgent. It's best to see if you could perhaps generalise it in some way and get a better return, or maybe invest your complexity budget more wisely elsewhere. I doubt compiler directives make up more than 0.1% of a program. > If Zig language creators didn't do that so far, that's exactly what I call "not enough good faith went into Zig design". I've been programming for ~30 years, and aside from Scheme -- maybe -- I don't think I've ever encountered a better-designed language than Zig. Of course, this perception is subjective.