4 ms·

Why Zig Is Quietly Doing What Rust Couldn't: Staying Simple

simonask 11mo ago
I stopped reading when he compared the Rust compiler to his angry ex. Like, what are we doing. This “article” is flame bait.
- gabrielgio 11mo ago
  I read it through and there is nothing much there. Most of his points don't hold up to reality as rust is no longer (and hasn't been for a while) a "hyped language" and has proven time and time again to be a valuable language.
_fizz_buzz_ 11mo ago
Until it gets widely adopted and people want to have certain feature, etc.
- davidsainez 11mo ago
  Golang I think (mostly) successfully resisted this temptation
  - Simran-B 11mo ago
    Generics though
- 0-R-1-0-N 11mo ago
  Considering language syntax proposals aren’t accepted anymore and they have a culture of being minimal I believe it will remain so.
- hiccuphippo 11mo ago
  There's a reason it's in 0.x and will not reach 1.0 for a while.
ashdnazg 11mo ago
Seems to be hugged to death: https://archive.is/UauYs https://archive.is/UauYs
- ZeelRajodiya 11mo ago
  Thanks man!
- anttiharju 11mo ago
  Feels heavily AI-written, em dashes and the filler.
  - deleted 11mo ago
    [deleted]
can3p 11mo ago
Reads like a straw man. Was "being simple" anywhere in rust lang agenda?
- bjackman 11mo ago
  It's fair to complain about Rust complexity IMO. What's _not_ fair is pointing at Zig as an example of how it could be simpler, when it's not memory safe. The requirements are different. At that point we might as well say "why use Rust when you can just use Go or TypeScript"
deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]
MrJohz 11mo ago
Freedium is down, you may be able to read this using Medium instead: https://medium.com/@daxx5/why-zig-is-quietly-doing-what-rust-couldnt-staying-simple-a47f86b3a58a https://medium.com/@daxx5/why-zig-is-quietly-doing-what-rust... I could only see the first few paragraphs, but the writing is giving off a lot of "AI slop" vibes (or perhaps even "human-written slop", let's give the author the benefit of the doubt). So maybe it's no great loss if it's behind a Medium paywall.
orangeboats 11mo ago
This was posted less than 2 weeks ago. Why bother doing it again? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45849204 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45849204
CryZe 11mo ago
Zig has no undefined behavior?
- Simran-B 11mo ago
  Zig has the concept of illegal behavior, of which a subset is unchecked illegal behavior - basically undefined behavior, but if evaluated at comptime, it results in a compile error. The documentation also states that most illegal behavior is safety-checked unless you use the ReleaseFast or ReleaseSmall optimization modes (and don't enable safety checks for individual blocks).
captainbland 11mo ago
> Rust shouted about safety. Zig just built it This makes it sound like Zig built Rust equivalent safety but its manual memory model suggests otherwise?
rini17 11mo ago
Perl too was refreshingly simple and DWIM(Do What I Mean). And then it wasn't.
nottorp 11mo ago
A thought: is using Rust a form of avoiding responsability? And a second thought since the article seems to be flagged now: considering the fan reaction to a post disparaging their favorite language, how is the Rust community different from a religious cult now?
- aw1621107 11mo ago
  > is using Rust a form of avoiding responsability? How so? > considering the fan reaction to a post disparaging their favorite language, how is the Rust community different from a religious cult now? Believe it or not, not all criticism is created equal. High-quality criticism is consistently well-received from what I've seen. This doesn't seem to get particularly close to that bar.
  - nottorp 11mo ago
    I don't think i've seen on HN discussions any criticism directed at rust that was acknowledged as high quality though.
    - aw1621107 11mo ago
      Probably the best example I can think of off the top of my head is "Leaving Rust gamedev after 3 years", which got a fair bit of (positive!) attention both on HN [0] and on /r/rust [1]. If you look through the comments there a huge proportion of them generally agree with the article, and the top comment explicitly calls it "a good article". On /r/rust Josh Triplett (one of the Rust devs) has the top comment on the post basically acknowledging that the criticisms are valid/reasonable and thanking the author for their feedback [2]. I've seen other criticisms spawn good discussions and/or a good number of people agreeing, but nothing quite as clearly on point as that off the top of my head. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40172033 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40172033 [1]: https://old.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/1cdqdsi/lessons_learned_after_3_years_of_fulltime_rust/ https://old.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/1cdqdsi/lessons_learn... [2]: https://old.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/1cdqdsi/lessons_learned_after_3_years_of_fulltime_rust/l1e722d/ https://old.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/1cdqdsi/lessons_learn...
ChadNauseam 11mo ago
I know this post is AI generated to some extent but I'm still curious. The subtitle says: > Rust shouted about safety. Zig just built it — without the ceremony, the sermons, or the 15-minute compile times. Which I interpret as meaning that zig delivers memory safety in a simpler way than rust. But a few paragraphs in, it says: > Rust teaches you ownership like a tough-love therapist. Zig, meanwhile, just shrugs and says, "You break it, you fix it." That's the philosophical divide. Rust assumes you can't be trusted. Zig assumes you're an adult. Does this mean that zig's safety depends on trusting the programmer to write correct code? This wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing if zig makes correct code simple to write or has other advantages, but if incorrect code is allowed it makes sense why the compiler can be more permissive and I wouldn't say it's quite delivered the same thing as Rust. Ok, another thing: > Zig looks boring. Feels boring. Reads like a C project written by someone who finally went to therapy. pub fn main() void { const stdout = std.io.getStdOut().writer(); stdout.print("Hello, World!\n", .{}) catch unreachable; } > That's it. No macros. No build.rs. No Cargo screaming about outdated crates. Am I crazy or does this not actually look simpler than fn main() { println!("Hello, world!"); } Is the zig version doing something other than hello world? Or did the author, in their post about how zig is simpler and more readable than rust, choose a code example where the corresponding rust code would be much simpler and more readable?
- gabrielgio 11mo ago
  There is a simpler version for zig. pub fn main() !void { std.debug.print("Hello, World!\n", .{}); } The only difference is this writes to stderr and does not fail (and explicitly says it is meant for debug), while their example writes to stdout. In zig if you want to write to stdout you need to explicitly pick the std and handle all the details (like error handling). He gave the possible worst example, this article is nonsense.
- tuetuopay 11mo ago
  Zig's memory safety has nothing in common with Rust. I'd even say, it mostly has barely more than C. It gets reliability from proper error handling. It has a very weird feeling complaining about build.rs when any semi-serious Zig project comes with a build.zig that's always more complex than any build.rs.
ravenical 11mo ago
Yeah, this is AI. "1. Rust Promised Us Heaven. Then Gave Us Paperwork. Remember the hype? Rust was the "C killer." The messiah of memory safety. The savior of systems programming."
yonki 11mo ago
>Zig, meanwhile, just shrugs and says, "You break it, you fix it."< Exactly. That’s what Rust defends us from. It makes breaking things way harder. Rust forces you to think differently, you cannot just do what you want, but that’s it’s selling point. The article focuses mainly on feelings not facts and that’s ok, but I don’t feel exhausted writing Rust. I like that it’s safe and I’m happy to sacrifice some freedom if I get safety in return. That’s a weird article. Rust wanted to be safe systems language and it is. Where’s the issue? Zig has different goals. That’s ok. What are actually discussing here?
kugutsumen 11mo ago
AI generated slop...
lenkite 11mo ago
I like the article's theme. Coding in Rust does indeed suck brain-power and even after 2 years of off-and-on attempts, I am still faster (and less tired) in other languages (including C++). But the LLM generated text is just deeply pissing me off, sorry. Why use snarky LLM slop here ? Use straightforward, ordinary human-developer language for this.

I stopped reading when he compared the Rust compiler to his angry ex. Like, what are we doing. This “article” is flame bait.

gabrielgio 11mo ago
I read it through and there is nothing much there. Most of his points don't hold up to reality as rust is no longer (and hasn't been for a while) a "hyped language" and has proven time and time again to be a valuable language.

_fizz_buzz_ 11mo ago

Until it gets widely adopted and people want to have certain feature, etc.

davidsainez 11mo ago
Golang I think (mostly) successfully resisted this temptation
- Simran-B 11mo ago
  Generics though
0-R-1-0-N 11mo ago
Considering language syntax proposals aren’t accepted anymore and they have a culture of being minimal I believe it will remain so.
hiccuphippo 11mo ago
There's a reason it's in 0.x and will not reach 1.0 for a while.

ashdnazg 11mo ago

Seems to be hugged to death: https://archive.is/UauYs https://archive.is/UauYs

ZeelRajodiya 11mo ago
Thanks man!
anttiharju 11mo ago
Feels heavily AI-written, em dashes and the filler.
- deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]

can3p 11mo ago

Reads like a straw man. Was "being simple" anywhere in rust lang agenda?

bjackman 11mo ago
It's fair to complain about Rust complexity IMO. What's _not_ fair is pointing at Zig as an example of how it could be simpler, when it's not memory safe. The requirements are different. At that point we might as well say "why use Rust when you can just use Go or TypeScript"

deleted 11mo ago

[deleted]

MrJohz 11mo ago

Freedium is down, you may be able to read this using Medium instead: https://medium.com/@daxx5/why-zig-is-quietly-doing-what-rust-couldnt-staying-simple-a47f86b3a58a https://medium.com/@daxx5/why-zig-is-quietly-doing-what-rust... I could only see the first few paragraphs, but the writing is giving off a lot of "AI slop" vibes (or perhaps even "human-written slop", let's give the author the benefit of the doubt). So maybe it's no great loss if it's behind a Medium paywall.

orangeboats 11mo ago

This was posted less than 2 weeks ago. Why bother doing it again? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45849204 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45849204

CryZe 11mo ago

Zig has no undefined behavior?

Simran-B 11mo ago
Zig has the concept of illegal behavior, of which a subset is unchecked illegal behavior - basically undefined behavior, but if evaluated at comptime, it results in a compile error. The documentation also states that most illegal behavior is safety-checked unless you use the ReleaseFast or ReleaseSmall optimization modes (and don't enable safety checks for individual blocks).

captainbland 11mo ago

> Rust shouted about safety. Zig just built it This makes it sound like Zig built Rust equivalent safety but its manual memory model suggests otherwise?

rini17 11mo ago

Perl too was refreshingly simple and DWIM(Do What I Mean). And then it wasn't.

nottorp 11mo ago

A thought: is using Rust a form of avoiding responsability? And a second thought since the article seems to be flagged now: considering the fan reaction to a post disparaging their favorite language, how is the Rust community different from a religious cult now?

aw1621107 11mo ago
> is using Rust a form of avoiding responsability? How so? > considering the fan reaction to a post disparaging their favorite language, how is the Rust community different from a religious cult now? Believe it or not, not all criticism is created equal. High-quality criticism is consistently well-received from what I've seen. This doesn't seem to get particularly close to that bar.
- nottorp 11mo ago
  I don't think i've seen on HN discussions any criticism directed at rust that was acknowledged as high quality though.
  - aw1621107 11mo ago
    Probably the best example I can think of off the top of my head is "Leaving Rust gamedev after 3 years", which got a fair bit of (positive!) attention both on HN [0] and on /r/rust [1]. If you look through the comments there a huge proportion of them generally agree with the article, and the top comment explicitly calls it "a good article". On /r/rust Josh Triplett (one of the Rust devs) has the top comment on the post basically acknowledging that the criticisms are valid/reasonable and thanking the author for their feedback [2]. I've seen other criticisms spawn good discussions and/or a good number of people agreeing, but nothing quite as clearly on point as that off the top of my head. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40172033 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40172033 [1]: https://old.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/1cdqdsi/lessons_learned_after_3_years_of_fulltime_rust/ https://old.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/1cdqdsi/lessons_learn... [2]: https://old.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/1cdqdsi/lessons_learned_after_3_years_of_fulltime_rust/l1e722d/ https://old.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/1cdqdsi/lessons_learn...

ChadNauseam 11mo ago

I know this post is AI generated to some extent but I'm still curious. The subtitle says: > Rust shouted about safety. Zig just built it — without the ceremony, the sermons, or the 15-minute compile times. Which I interpret as meaning that zig delivers memory safety in a simpler way than rust. But a few paragraphs in, it says: > Rust teaches you ownership like a tough-love therapist. Zig, meanwhile, just shrugs and says, "You break it, you fix it." That's the philosophical divide. Rust assumes you can't be trusted. Zig assumes you're an adult. Does this mean that zig's safety depends on trusting the programmer to write correct code? This wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing if zig makes correct code simple to write or has other advantages, but if incorrect code is allowed it makes sense why the compiler can be more permissive and I wouldn't say it's quite delivered the same thing as Rust. Ok, another thing: > Zig looks boring. Feels boring. Reads like a C project written by someone who finally went to therapy. pub fn main() void { const stdout = std.io.getStdOut().writer(); stdout.print("Hello, World!\n", .{}) catch unreachable; } > That's it. No macros. No build.rs. No Cargo screaming about outdated crates. Am I crazy or does this not actually look simpler than fn main() { println!("Hello, world!"); } Is the zig version doing something other than hello world? Or did the author, in their post about how zig is simpler and more readable than rust, choose a code example where the corresponding rust code would be much simpler and more readable?

gabrielgio 11mo ago
There is a simpler version for zig. pub fn main() !void { std.debug.print("Hello, World!\n", .{}); } The only difference is this writes to stderr and does not fail (and explicitly says it is meant for debug), while their example writes to stdout. In zig if you want to write to stdout you need to explicitly pick the std and handle all the details (like error handling). He gave the possible worst example, this article is nonsense.
tuetuopay 11mo ago
Zig's memory safety has nothing in common with Rust. I'd even say, it mostly has barely more than C. It gets reliability from proper error handling. It has a very weird feeling complaining about build.rs when any semi-serious Zig project comes with a build.zig that's always more complex than any build.rs.

ravenical 11mo ago

Yeah, this is AI. "1. Rust Promised Us Heaven. Then Gave Us Paperwork. Remember the hype? Rust was the "C killer." The messiah of memory safety. The savior of systems programming."

yonki 11mo ago

>Zig, meanwhile, just shrugs and says, "You break it, you fix it."< Exactly. That’s what Rust defends us from. It makes breaking things way harder. Rust forces you to think differently, you cannot just do what you want, but that’s it’s selling point. The article focuses mainly on feelings not facts and that’s ok, but I don’t feel exhausted writing Rust. I like that it’s safe and I’m happy to sacrifice some freedom if I get safety in return. That’s a weird article. Rust wanted to be safe systems language and it is. Where’s the issue? Zig has different goals. That’s ok. What are actually discussing here?

kugutsumen 11mo ago

AI generated slop...

lenkite 11mo ago

I like the article's theme. Coding in Rust does indeed suck brain-power and even after 2 years of off-and-on attempts, I am still faster (and less tired) in other languages (including C++). But the LLM generated text is just deeply pissing me off, sorry. Why use snarky LLM slop here ? Use straightforward, ordinary human-developer language for this.