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> it's a separate implementation from the one that takes an allocator I want to give zig a fair assessment so yes, this is absolutely right. This is why I have

> it's a separate implementation from the one that takes an allocator I want to give zig a fair assessment so yes, this is absolutely right. This is why I have elsewhere said that zig is basically two separate but superficially similar languages. You can probably accomplish just about anything in comptime zig, if you're willing to completely reimplement it from the core language up. The limitations I mention come in if you try to write code to be used in either comptime or runtime zig. So comptime zig has no growable arrays, no dictionaries, no string searching, no regexes, etc. etc. until these are reimplemented specifically for comptime zig. Mostly this is just sad, that a decent idea was implemented with such a terrible downside that would be so easy to fix: just add allocators. Just. Add. Allocators. But no, the zig team has explicitly rejected this.

bsder 4y ago
> Just. Add. Allocators. But no, the zig team has explicitly rejected this. I'm torn on this. To me, comptime is the C preprocessor but sane. Anything you can do above that is bonus. I don't need comptime to be totally Turing complete. And, I do NOT want macros in the language. Macros are a bottomless well of suck. Lisps/Schemes still tie themselves into knots with macro hygeine. Rust's procmacros are terrible and debugging them is worse--just try figuring out what some intermediate expansion did. The point of Zig is to NOT be Rust/C++/etc. The point is to be C with a bunch of the sharp edges and corners filed off. It's not for everybody. If you want web services, use Go. ML/AI--Python for ecosystem. Rust for strong safety guarantees. Zig has some nice things while still remaining relatively small. It, like most modern languages, understands that ecosystem is important. It does a better job than almost everybody at cross compiling. comptime gets you a lot of the benefits of templates while dodging lots of the suckage. However, at some point, you have to declare "Stop, that isn't going to be part of the language" or you wind up with the ungodly mess that is C++.
- WalterBright 4y ago
  I infamously declined to implement macros in D. Macros are like giving a machine gun to a self-aware robot.

bsder 4y ago

> Just. Add. Allocators. But no, the zig team has explicitly rejected this. I'm torn on this. To me, comptime is the C preprocessor but sane. Anything you can do above that is bonus. I don't need comptime to be totally Turing complete. And, I do NOT want macros in the language. Macros are a bottomless well of suck. Lisps/Schemes still tie themselves into knots with macro hygeine. Rust's procmacros are terrible and debugging them is worse--just try figuring out what some intermediate expansion did. The point of Zig is to NOT be Rust/C++/etc. The point is to be C with a bunch of the sharp edges and corners filed off. It's not for everybody. If you want web services, use Go. ML/AI--Python for ecosystem. Rust for strong safety guarantees. Zig has some nice things while still remaining relatively small. It, like most modern languages, understands that ecosystem is important. It does a better job than almost everybody at cross compiling. comptime gets you a lot of the benefits of templates while dodging lots of the suckage. However, at some point, you have to declare "Stop, that isn't going to be part of the language" or you wind up with the ungodly mess that is C++.

WalterBright 4y ago
I infamously declined to implement macros in D. Macros are like giving a machine gun to a self-aware robot.