5 ms·

I'm a decades-long C hacker and I'm not sure why I should use Zig anywhere that I use C. What's the killer feature/reason?

verdagon 4y ago
A few big benefits off the top of my head: * A concurrency mechanism that's very easy to use, because it doesn't have the function coloring problem of async/await. * Extra assistance with memory safety, via its "release-safe" mode. Not a silver bullet, but it does help! * Good tooling; zig cc can cross-compile from any major OS to any major OS. * Comptime, a pretty brilliant system that does what generics does for other languages, with a fraction of the complexity.
- dleslie 4y ago
  I've never had a problem with concurrency in C, really. async/await in other language is fine and all, and I've had my fair share of them there, but I wonder if the difficulty in reasoning about them is worthwhile wherever I use C. I'm more likely to want something declarative and explicit than async/await. Again, memory safety has never really been a problem for me where I use C; and if I want it, I'd want something as strong as Rust's borrow checker or at least the smart pointers of C++. zig cc can't cross-compile on all platforms, particularly not esoteric and proprietary embedded targets or game hardware, and so that's a nothingburger for me.
  - throwawaymaths 4y ago
    Zigs async/await is not really a concurrency construct (though you can use it as the basis for a work stealing scheduler), it's something much more fundamental and close to the metal.
ArrayBoundCheck 4y ago
From what I hear 1. No headers (you can use headers to import C functions. None needed for other zig functions). 2. defer 3. Comptime
- dleslie 4y ago
  AFAICT, comptime is the single most interesting feature. Tagged unions _kind of suck_, and the alternatives are preprocessor abuse, _Generic, or similar. Just not as appealing as comptime, really.
  - ArrayBoundCheck 4y ago
    So are you still unsure? Since you said from where you use C headers would absolutely top a reason for me. I hate that bs gruntwork
cturtle 4y ago
Among all the other suggestions, I appreciate the refinement to the type system that zig has over c. Like bools and ints are distinct types, built in slice types to associate a pointer and length, arrays have a length, well-defined integer sizes (i32 for example), optional, errors, etc. it’s little things like that which make a language much easier to use in the long run.
Laremere 4y ago
C has an enormous weight to it. If you've been carrying it for decades, you are likely somewhere between being so used to carrying it it's hard to notice the burden, and being so at ease with carrying it that it's not actually a burden. Imo, Zig doesn't have /a/ killer feature. Instead it has hundreds of small design choices made with the insight of decades of programing language evolution, along with a few clever ideas on its own. I would say it's well on the way to becoming the best language for giving you control as a programmer over the computer. Compared to say Rust focusing on safety first, execution speed second, ergonomics third; Or Go on maintainable systems at large corp scale. To list some specific examples: - No headers. - No complex build and linkage systems. - Fast compilation (and no explosion of compile time as headers import headers.) - A small and distinct set of fundamental types, with true enums, unions, and arbitrary size integers. - Code formatting, which is a feature that feels kind of invisible, but means arbitrary code you look at will be formatted in a familiar way. A subtle but powerful difference. - It doesn't try to remove undefined behavior. Instead it does a really good job of catching you hitting it when building in a development version. Imo, often code wrote simply will have undefined behavior that is meaningless because it will never be called with that behavior. It's fine to code that way in C until you accidentally hit it and have a hell of a time figuring out why something isn't working.
AndyKelley 4y ago
std.ArrayList std.HashMap std.ArrayHashMap std.MultiArrayList std.heap.ArenaAllocator defer/errdefer, try, catch Debug mode: stack traces, safety checks, segfault handler, error return tracing, valgrind integration, undefined bytes set to 0xAA, GeneralPurposeAllocator finds leaks, double frees, and use-after-frees Comptime instead of macros Unit testing
syntheweave 4y ago
The killer feature of Zig is polish - not yet in implementation(teething issues still abound if one tries to take it into production) but definitely in design. It goes down the list of every language wart or make-do tooling situation in C and addresses it with a reasonably specified and generalized feature, without making the language much bigger(if it is at all - it's not a big language spec). It actively works on some really grody systems-level problems with building binaries that most languages will address with "compiles to C" and C itself addresses with "fight the build system" - Zig aims to be a one-stop shop that clarifies this process. And it integrates C code compilation into its build system, so existing projects can be migrated.

verdagon 4y ago

A few big benefits off the top of my head: * A concurrency mechanism that's very easy to use, because it doesn't have the function coloring problem of async/await. * Extra assistance with memory safety, via its "release-safe" mode. Not a silver bullet, but it does help! * Good tooling; zig cc can cross-compile from any major OS to any major OS. * Comptime, a pretty brilliant system that does what generics does for other languages, with a fraction of the complexity.

dleslie 4y ago
I've never had a problem with concurrency in C, really. async/await in other language is fine and all, and I've had my fair share of them there, but I wonder if the difficulty in reasoning about them is worthwhile wherever I use C. I'm more likely to want something declarative and explicit than async/await. Again, memory safety has never really been a problem for me where I use C; and if I want it, I'd want something as strong as Rust's borrow checker or at least the smart pointers of C++. zig cc can't cross-compile on all platforms, particularly not esoteric and proprietary embedded targets or game hardware, and so that's a nothingburger for me.
- throwawaymaths 4y ago
  Zigs async/await is not really a concurrency construct (though you can use it as the basis for a work stealing scheduler), it's something much more fundamental and close to the metal.

ArrayBoundCheck 4y ago

From what I hear 1. No headers (you can use headers to import C functions. None needed for other zig functions). 2. defer 3. Comptime

dleslie 4y ago
AFAICT, comptime is the single most interesting feature. Tagged unions _kind of suck_, and the alternatives are preprocessor abuse, _Generic, or similar. Just not as appealing as comptime, really.
- ArrayBoundCheck 4y ago
  So are you still unsure? Since you said from where you use C headers would absolutely top a reason for me. I hate that bs gruntwork

cturtle 4y ago

Among all the other suggestions, I appreciate the refinement to the type system that zig has over c. Like bools and ints are distinct types, built in slice types to associate a pointer and length, arrays have a length, well-defined integer sizes (i32 for example), optional, errors, etc. it’s little things like that which make a language much easier to use in the long run.

Laremere 4y ago

C has an enormous weight to it. If you've been carrying it for decades, you are likely somewhere between being so used to carrying it it's hard to notice the burden, and being so at ease with carrying it that it's not actually a burden. Imo, Zig doesn't have /a/ killer feature. Instead it has hundreds of small design choices made with the insight of decades of programing language evolution, along with a few clever ideas on its own. I would say it's well on the way to becoming the best language for giving you control as a programmer over the computer. Compared to say Rust focusing on safety first, execution speed second, ergonomics third; Or Go on maintainable systems at large corp scale. To list some specific examples: - No headers. - No complex build and linkage systems. - Fast compilation (and no explosion of compile time as headers import headers.) - A small and distinct set of fundamental types, with true enums, unions, and arbitrary size integers. - Code formatting, which is a feature that feels kind of invisible, but means arbitrary code you look at will be formatted in a familiar way. A subtle but powerful difference. - It doesn't try to remove undefined behavior. Instead it does a really good job of catching you hitting it when building in a development version. Imo, often code wrote simply will have undefined behavior that is meaningless because it will never be called with that behavior. It's fine to code that way in C until you accidentally hit it and have a hell of a time figuring out why something isn't working.

AndyKelley 4y ago

std.ArrayList std.HashMap std.ArrayHashMap std.MultiArrayList std.heap.ArenaAllocator defer/errdefer, try, catch Debug mode: stack traces, safety checks, segfault handler, error return tracing, valgrind integration, undefined bytes set to 0xAA, GeneralPurposeAllocator finds leaks, double frees, and use-after-frees Comptime instead of macros Unit testing

syntheweave 4y ago

The killer feature of Zig is polish - not yet in implementation(teething issues still abound if one tries to take it into production) but definitely in design. It goes down the list of every language wart or make-do tooling situation in C and addresses it with a reasonably specified and generalized feature, without making the language much bigger(if it is at all - it's not a big language spec). It actively works on some really grody systems-level problems with building binaries that most languages will address with "compiles to C" and C itself addresses with "fight the build system" - Zig aims to be a one-stop shop that clarifies this process. And it integrates C code compilation into its build system, so existing projects can be migrated.