10 ms·

It seems like he wants zig to be more like rust. personally, i like that zig is so simple

zamalek 2y ago
This is absolutely not what the article is about. A good majority of it is spent on the myth that Zig is safer than Rust, which has nothing to do with wishing Zig was more like Rust.
- chrisco255 2y ago
  Is there a myth that makes that claim? Virtually every take I've heard is that Zig is "safe enough" while giving developers more control over memory and actually, it's specifically better for cases where you must write unsafe code, as it's not possible to express all programs in safe Rust.
  - bobbylarrybobby 2y ago
    If you must write unsafe code, what's wrong with just dropping down to unsafe in Rust when you need to? You have all the power unsafe provides, and you have a smaller surface area to audit than if your entire codebase resides in one big unsafe block.
    - chrisco255 2y ago
      Unsafe Rust is problematic: https://zackoverflow.dev/writing/unsafe-rust-vs-zig https://zackoverflow.dev/writing/unsafe-rust-vs-zig See also: https://github.com/roc-lang/roc/blob/main/www/content/faq.md#why-does-roc-use-both-rust-and-zig-rust-and-zig https://github.com/roc-lang/roc/blob/main/www/content/faq.md... Zig is not entirely unsafe. It provides quite a few compile time checks and primitives to catch memory leaks or prevent them altogether.
      - oneshtein 2y ago
        Yes, unsafe code is problematic in Rust, C, C++, etc. Is Zig different?
        mk12 2y ago
        It’s harder to write correct unsafe Rust than correct Zig because (1) Rust uses references all over the place, but when writing unsafe code you must scrupulously avoid “producing” an invalid reference (even if you never deference it), and (2) there’s lots of syntax noise which obscures what the code is doing (though &raw is a step in the right direction).
        zozbot234 2y ago
        > Rust uses references all over the place This is mostly a concern with the Rust stdlib, though. And it's in principle fixable, by writing new varieties of those stdlib functions that take raw-pointer or &UnsafeCell<...> arguments, and delegating the "safe" varieties to those.
        kprotty 2y ago
        There's compiler-level traits like `Iterator` and `Future` which enforce references. If wanting to do intrusive pointers into them, one risks creating overlapping references: https://github.com/tokio-rs/tokio/issues/3399 https://github.com/tokio-rs/tokio/issues/3399
        zozbot234 2y ago
        References to UnsafeCell<> should still be safe, because the only thing you can do with an &UnsafeCell<T> is extract a possibly-mutating raw pointer to T. (UnsafeCell<> is also special in that, like Cell<>, you can mutate through it without incurring UB.)
        oneshtein 2y ago
        For Rust references, rules[0] are not hard to follow: The pointer must be properly aligned. It must be non-null. It must be “dereferenceable”: a pointer is dereferenceable if the memory range of the given size starting at the pointer is entirely contained within the bounds of that allocated object. Note that in Rust, every (stack-allocated) variable is considered a separate allocated object. The pointer must point to a valid value of type T. When creating a mutable reference, then while this reference exists, the memory it points to must not get accessed (read or written) through any other pointer or reference not derived from this reference. When creating a shared reference, then while this reference exists, the memory it points to must not get mutated (except inside UnsafeCell). [0]: https://doc.rust-lang.org/stable/core/ptr/index.html#pointer-to-reference-conversion https://doc.rust-lang.org/stable/core/ptr/index.html#pointer...
    - ulbu 2y ago
      the barrier between unsafe and safe has additional rules. it’s not “just dropping to unsafe” – you need to make sure you leave it safely.
  - baranul 2y ago
    Various modern alternative languages can claim to be "safe enough" or safer than C, along with C interop. Nim, Dlang... In fact, the V programming language (Vlang) can make the argument of being even safer, because it has more default safety features and an optional GC (that no libraries depend on) for greater memory safety. That and it being designed to be easier to use and learn, for general-purpose programming. The article, in its review of the Zig language, goes after its marketing history and broken promises (calling Andrew's statements fallacious and worse) for attempting to portray itself as safer than unsafe Rust, the distortions around UB (undefined behavior), etc... As a consequence of the demonstrably valid test results and being tired of unreliability, the author stopped using Zig. It should also be mentioned, that v1 Zig is nowhere in sight, so likely many years more to wait.
- ulbu 2y ago
  i haven’t seen anyone pronounce it anywhere once.
grayhatter 2y ago
This is 100% why the article was written. The author spends a LOT of time trying to convince others the way rust does $anything is better.

This is absolutely not what the article is about. A good majority of it is spent on the myth that Zig is safer than Rust, which has nothing to do with wishing Zig was more like Rust.

chrisco255 2y ago
Is there a myth that makes that claim? Virtually every take I've heard is that Zig is "safe enough" while giving developers more control over memory and actually, it's specifically better for cases where you must write unsafe code, as it's not possible to express all programs in safe Rust.
- bobbylarrybobby 2y ago
  If you must write unsafe code, what's wrong with just dropping down to unsafe in Rust when you need to? You have all the power unsafe provides, and you have a smaller surface area to audit than if your entire codebase resides in one big unsafe block.
  - chrisco255 2y ago
    Unsafe Rust is problematic: https://zackoverflow.dev/writing/unsafe-rust-vs-zig https://zackoverflow.dev/writing/unsafe-rust-vs-zig See also: https://github.com/roc-lang/roc/blob/main/www/content/faq.md#why-does-roc-use-both-rust-and-zig-rust-and-zig https://github.com/roc-lang/roc/blob/main/www/content/faq.md... Zig is not entirely unsafe. It provides quite a few compile time checks and primitives to catch memory leaks or prevent them altogether.
    - oneshtein 2y ago
      Yes, unsafe code is problematic in Rust, C, C++, etc. Is Zig different?
      - mk12 2y ago
        It’s harder to write correct unsafe Rust than correct Zig because (1) Rust uses references all over the place, but when writing unsafe code you must scrupulously avoid “producing” an invalid reference (even if you never deference it), and (2) there’s lots of syntax noise which obscures what the code is doing (though &raw is a step in the right direction).
        zozbot234 2y ago
        > Rust uses references all over the place This is mostly a concern with the Rust stdlib, though. And it's in principle fixable, by writing new varieties of those stdlib functions that take raw-pointer or &UnsafeCell<...> arguments, and delegating the "safe" varieties to those.
        kprotty 2y ago
        There's compiler-level traits like `Iterator` and `Future` which enforce references. If wanting to do intrusive pointers into them, one risks creating overlapping references: https://github.com/tokio-rs/tokio/issues/3399 https://github.com/tokio-rs/tokio/issues/3399
        zozbot234 2y ago
        References to UnsafeCell<> should still be safe, because the only thing you can do with an &UnsafeCell<T> is extract a possibly-mutating raw pointer to T. (UnsafeCell<> is also special in that, like Cell<>, you can mutate through it without incurring UB.)
        oneshtein 2y ago
        For Rust references, rules[0] are not hard to follow: The pointer must be properly aligned. It must be non-null. It must be “dereferenceable”: a pointer is dereferenceable if the memory range of the given size starting at the pointer is entirely contained within the bounds of that allocated object. Note that in Rust, every (stack-allocated) variable is considered a separate allocated object. The pointer must point to a valid value of type T. When creating a mutable reference, then while this reference exists, the memory it points to must not get accessed (read or written) through any other pointer or reference not derived from this reference. When creating a shared reference, then while this reference exists, the memory it points to must not get mutated (except inside UnsafeCell). [0]: https://doc.rust-lang.org/stable/core/ptr/index.html#pointer-to-reference-conversion https://doc.rust-lang.org/stable/core/ptr/index.html#pointer...
  - ulbu 2y ago
    the barrier between unsafe and safe has additional rules. it’s not “just dropping to unsafe” – you need to make sure you leave it safely.
- baranul 2y ago
  Various modern alternative languages can claim to be "safe enough" or safer than C, along with C interop. Nim, Dlang... In fact, the V programming language (Vlang) can make the argument of being even safer, because it has more default safety features and an optional GC (that no libraries depend on) for greater memory safety. That and it being designed to be easier to use and learn, for general-purpose programming. The article, in its review of the Zig language, goes after its marketing history and broken promises (calling Andrew's statements fallacious and worse) for attempting to portray itself as safer than unsafe Rust, the distortions around UB (undefined behavior), etc... As a consequence of the demonstrably valid test results and being tired of unreliability, the author stopped using Zig. It should also be mentioned, that v1 Zig is nowhere in sight, so likely many years more to wait.
ulbu 2y ago
i haven’t seen anyone pronounce it anywhere once.

grayhatter 2y ago

This is 100% why the article was written. The author spends a LOT of time trying to convince others the way rust does $anything is better.