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Comment by Yoric | Hacker News Reader

It is my understanding indeed that Zig doesn't want you to build too many abstractions. I think that there is room in the design space for languages with few abstractions. That's also what the creators of Go intended, if I understand correctly, and that seems to work for many developers.

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> Zig doesn't want you to build too many abstractions

I don't want to build too many either. I prefer to build just the right amount of abstractions. Sounds though like Zig makes that difficult, so at least for me, it is a hard pass.

It's a matter of perspective, I would argue that C++ makes it really hard to write the right amount, especially when you want to use overly-abstracted third party code that forces you into making a deal with the devil sometimes.

But then again, it's a matter of perspective.

I would agree with you. I don't use C++, it is too much of a mess.

Then you can appreciate a language that tries to make sure the ecosystem does not become a mess :^)

But Zig certainly isn't that language, because not having the right abstractions always results in a mess. I mean, just read the article.

Trying to solve problems in one language as though it was a completely different language that has a different philosophy is the problem.

I am not using Zig, there is no problem here.

Rust seems like a good middle ground.

Iirc you can handle allocation failures there now too, which I have often seen being criticized

Yeah, I get your point. Poor programmers need to be kept on a leash, so off you go with dumbed-down languages.

Honestly most bad abstraction come from authors thinking they're geniuses (in that moment)

Sure, as well as the right abstractions come from professionals who are not treated like stupid kids.

Yep, just like a professional barber's razor is dumbed down because it only has one blade instead of 6, a swiveling head and a battery-powered vibration function.

:^)

Wrong!

A barber's razor is the perfect tool for the trade, together with a sharpening stone.

The Go equivalent would be a blade with two dull sides.

The Go equivalent also mocks you in an effete tone and claims "everybody shaves with a dull blade these days so why don't you?"

My beard keeps my face warm in winter?

META: analogies are double-edged swords.

Now that Go has generics (finally), this analogy seems a tad too harsh.

A professional barber's razor is flexible through its simplicity. Zig's errors are not flexible due to their separate syntax rules, which seems like the opposite of one sharp blade that handles anything.

If you want total control over your hardware, you're free to use machine code. Is a type system a leash? I mean surely you want to interpret memory however you want without the language getting in the way of forcing you to use methods. Are unique/shared pointers a leash? Or the borrow checker? They restrict what you can do with your objects because you're a poor programmer who can't code correctly. No true developer needs memory safety. Are calling conventions a leash? Surely you know better how to manage the stack and registers and everyone else should listen to you and do it the way you prefer.

It's not me calling Go users idiots: it's one of the Go designers!

“The key point here is our programmers are Googlers, they’re not researchers. They’re typically, fairly young, fresh out of school, probably learned Java, maybe learned C or C++, probably learned Python. They’re not capable of understanding a brilliant language, but we want to use them to build good software. So, the language that we give them has to be easy for them to understand and easy to adopt.”

-- Rob Pike

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