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I get the usefulness of allocators, I just don't see them as useful enough where I'd pick zig over another established systems programming language. Do you have

I get the usefulness of allocators, I just don't see them as useful enough where I'd pick zig over another established systems programming language. Do you have an example?

chaz72 3mo ago
I think Zig would do better than Go at things like kernels, drivers, game engines, lower level sorts of things. Edited to add the obvious: SPIR-V, for instance. Of course there’s lots of programming that can afford to pay for GC side effects, if there weren’t we wouldn’t have invented GC, but it’s a little less universal, a little less ‘system’. For me, I came to Zig after horrible cross-platform experiences led me to try going all the way back to C and I found that I was spending way too much time learning to deal with accidental complexity instead of essential complexity. (Respect to the C masters but I failed to adapt.)
- PunchyHamster 3mo ago
  >I think Zig would do better than Go at things like kernels, drivers, game engines, lower level sorts of things. Edited to add the obvious: SPIR-V, for instance. But people don't write those in Go, they use Rust for it
  - chaz72 3mo ago
    My specific reply was to laszlojamf saying “it seems like go, but with manual allocation”. To your point though, if Rust is getting it done, go for it. A lot of people still write those in C though.
  - pjmlp 3mo ago
    Yes they do. Only those with anti-GC bias don't. Which is why TamaGo, TinyGo and gVisor exist.
dnautics 3mo ago
a lot of heavy duty systems have multiple allocator systems. the erlang virtual machine has 12: https://www.erlang.org/docs/25/man/erts_alloc.html https://www.erlang.org/docs/25/man/erts_alloc.html jvm has at least 5: https://github.com/openjdk/jdk/blob/master/src/hotspot/share/memory/allocation.hpp https://github.com/openjdk/jdk/blob/master/src/hotspot/share... postgres has at least 8: https://github.com/postgres/postgres/blob/master/src/backend/utils/mmgr/README https://github.com/postgres/postgres/blob/master/src/backend... since zig anoints an allocator interface in its stdlib, your (and the stdlib's) data structures which use allocators can be trivially reused across different allocation strategies without rewriting code; and very likely (not guaranteed ofc) if you bring in someone else's code they will cleave to convention.
- nesarkvechnep 3mo ago
  Just yesterday I was thinking about the BEAM and would it be tidier if it were written in Zig.
- pjmlp 3mo ago
  JVM has surely more than 5, because the ecosystem enjoys multiple implementations.

I get the usefulness of allocators, I just don't see them as useful enough where I'd pick zig over another established systems programming language. Do you have an example?

chaz72 3mo ago

I think Zig would do better than Go at things like kernels, drivers, game engines, lower level sorts of things. Edited to add the obvious: SPIR-V, for instance. Of course there’s lots of programming that can afford to pay for GC side effects, if there weren’t we wouldn’t have invented GC, but it’s a little less universal, a little less ‘system’. For me, I came to Zig after horrible cross-platform experiences led me to try going all the way back to C and I found that I was spending way too much time learning to deal with accidental complexity instead of essential complexity. (Respect to the C masters but I failed to adapt.)

PunchyHamster 3mo ago
>I think Zig would do better than Go at things like kernels, drivers, game engines, lower level sorts of things. Edited to add the obvious: SPIR-V, for instance. But people don't write those in Go, they use Rust for it
- chaz72 3mo ago
  My specific reply was to laszlojamf saying “it seems like go, but with manual allocation”. To your point though, if Rust is getting it done, go for it. A lot of people still write those in C though.
- pjmlp 3mo ago
  Yes they do. Only those with anti-GC bias don't. Which is why TamaGo, TinyGo and gVisor exist.

dnautics 3mo ago

a lot of heavy duty systems have multiple allocator systems. the erlang virtual machine has 12: https://www.erlang.org/docs/25/man/erts_alloc.html https://www.erlang.org/docs/25/man/erts_alloc.html jvm has at least 5: https://github.com/openjdk/jdk/blob/master/src/hotspot/share/memory/allocation.hpp https://github.com/openjdk/jdk/blob/master/src/hotspot/share... postgres has at least 8: https://github.com/postgres/postgres/blob/master/src/backend/utils/mmgr/README https://github.com/postgres/postgres/blob/master/src/backend... since zig anoints an allocator interface in its stdlib, your (and the stdlib's) data structures which use allocators can be trivially reused across different allocation strategies without rewriting code; and very likely (not guaranteed ofc) if you bring in someone else's code they will cleave to convention.

nesarkvechnep 3mo ago
Just yesterday I was thinking about the BEAM and would it be tidier if it were written in Zig.
pjmlp 3mo ago
JVM has surely more than 5, because the ecosystem enjoys multiple implementations.