I've spent a fair amount of time learning C++ throughout the years (beginning in 2001) and Haskell. I mention these as examples of languages that seem to have n

I've spent a fair amount of time learning C++ throughout the years (beginning in 2001) and Haskell. I mention these as examples of languages that seem to have no end to them. Using and learning Zig after about 1.5-2 years is many times more productive because I've already found the edges of the language and I'm able to focus more on my actual task instead of debugging my language knowledge. I say this not only in the context of a work task but for things of every scope. I personally have never felt like I "knew" Haskell, despite working with it and being able to create solutions in it. I know parts of it and there are big parts of it looming somewhere in the distance. There are language extension names that actually give me anxiety when I see them at the top of source files. I think the same feeling is common in C++ users, though admittedly I don't have my finger on that pulse anymore. Is it possible to create finished solutions that are shorter and where your solution seems to fit the problem more directly in these languages? Yeah, I guess, but at the same time I'm not sure it's ever finished and the anxiety this kind of thing can cause when using these languages I think is underestimated. There's a tension that this creates where you have to intentionally limit yourself (and suggest others to limit themselves, see "Simple Haskell") because you feel the weight of all of this complexity on you constantly. "Maybe if we read this 'Thinking in Types' book we can cut down on the amount of lines in our code base, guys?". Meanwhile people using intentionally small languages are provably super productive and you see a lot of coping mechanisms in the communities with these ever-growing colossi languages. (With all of this said I'm not entirely sure I'd be sold on Zig if it didn't at least have tagged unions and matching/unpacking of them via `switch`. There are language features that I've grown so accustomed to that I feel like I can barely program without them.)