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Comment by jaxelr | Hacker News Reader

Kinda surprising that I see nothing from Zig on all these lists.

You shouldn't expect to see any pre-1.0 language in this list, especially Zig which not only makes no stability guarantees but actively discourages expecting any stability. Heck, Zig 0.15 just came out that completely overhauled the IO framework from top to bottom. Once Zig reaches 1.0, expect them to make some effort to gain adherents, which currently is a complete non-goal.

Don’t think zig will ever make it into popularity tbh. It is good for low level but it isn’t like rust or go. Rust and go are really good alternatives for c++ or java code, they just work, have good tooling etc. But I would never use zig for that kind of use case instead of rust since you don’t need to go full on engineering every dot mode.

I switched to zig from rust for implementing a database since 6 months and have no regrets but just don’t think anyone would use it for writing backend code or other similar smaller things.

I used to think similarly about rust before though so don’t really know anything

> I switched to zig from rust for implementing a database since 6 months and have no regrets but just don’t think anyone would use it for writing backend code or other similar smaller things.

I've been thinking about starting a project in Zig rather than Go lately, even though I am skilled at Go. I really like working with more, cracked? or simply crazy people willing to learn an esoteric language, and zig fits the needs in particular I have (mostly very nice C interop)

Would you recommend? How are the average zig contributors vs something like go?

I don’t know about go personally but I have found people pleasant so far, it was also pleasant in rust.

It is definitely an excellent language for doing personal projects imo

Rust has a unique niche it can occupy - namely, it's a "zero-overhead" memory safe low-level language.

I never understood why is go brought up next to rust all so often, when it has barely any unique qualities, and is a high-level GCd language with a dumb type system that outputs a single binary... of which there are 1000 other examples. At least it has good tooling, I guess.

    > I switched to zig from rust for implementing a database since 6 months and have no regrets but just don’t think anyone would use it for writing backend code or other similar smaller things.

I don't have a horse in this race, but have you shared more about this decision? It would make for a good blog post and an even better HN discussion.

I’m not that accomplished in this field so don’t think my pov will be that useful. It is mostly same as the rationale that tigerbeetle developers shared.

Might consider writing something if my project ends up being useful

Other than comptime, it doesn't bring anything new to the 21st century.

Its safety story is basically what Modula-2 (1978) and Object Pascal (1986) already had, but now it gets done with curly brackets instead of a begin/end language.

UAF is an issue, and the tooling to tackle this issue is exactly the same that C and C++ have available for the last 30 years, give it or take it.

It will be another language to talk about, however I doubt it will ever make it into mainstream, like having platfrom vendors and console Devkits care that Zig exists.

Eh? As far as I can tell Zig already has more traction than e.g. D, which is listed.

I don't think it's aiming for mainstream adoption anyway, it's a very specific niche.

First lets see if it actually manages 1.0, then lets see what major company adopts it for real.

D once upon a time was also hyped due to its Facebook usage, Remedy game engine tooling.

Also, has Zig already gone to space?

https://forum.dlang.org/thread/10614fc$273$1@digitalmars.com

Or used by car companies?

https://forum.dlang.org/thread/evridmtwtnhhwvorohyv@forum.dl...

Anyway, I don't expect any of them to grow beyond their niche userbase.

D has lost its momentum, and Zig isn't really interesting as 21st century language in the AI tooling age.

IMO a language made mainstream when Azure, AWS and GCP has sdks for it. It’s not fool proof but and its a perhaps a good indicator?

How many people are waiting for it to hit 1.0? I am.

I am interested in Zig, but until they can guarantee a stable point for an extended period of time I have limited interest. Same way with Rust gamedev I'm keeping an eye on Bevy but want it to hit 1.0. Some things pre-1.0 is fine, but more core pieces of dev like the language often warrant requiring greater stability guarantees.

I would be surprised to see it high in the rankings before it establishes certain backward compatibility guarantees.

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