Endgame: After creating a language that encourages programmers to make robust and optimal software, using a toolchain that exemplifies these ideals by providing an order of magnitude faster development iteration speed, point this energy towards the ecosystem, with a focus on our core principle of prioritizing the needs of end users. Building upon this rich ecosystem of high quality software, create and maintain free, libre, and open-source applications that outcompete proprietary versions. I want to see the next Blender, the next Postgresql, the next Linux. This is my vision.
Mitchell's Ghostty project is a perfect example of this movement. At least, it will be when it is open sourced.
> I want to see the next Blender, the next Postgresql, the next Linux. This is my vision.
Do you think it makes sense to augment these existing (and successful) open source projects with Zig (language and/or toolchain)? Or should something grassroots and written primarily in Zig be their eventual successor?
This is one of the shining features of the language: either of these is a viable option. Zig is a great way to build C projects, with native cross-compiling, and the semantics make it straightforward to supply a C API for Zig libraries to add to existing code in C. Depending on the specifics, it can make sense for a C codebase to switch to Zig's build system just for excellent cross compilation, without writing anything in Zig.
I think once Zig stops being a moving target, we'll see an increasing number of C codebases writing some of the new code in Zig, moving over to the build system, and taking it from there. There are a lot of decisions which make this easy. As an example, idiomatic Zig code which allocates memory receives an Allocator, where C uses malloc and free. So there's a C allocator, which provides the Allocator interface to malloc and free, meaning Zig code can create objects and pass the memory to C, which can free it later.
There's a lot of C code out there which is working just fine, and if it ain't broke, no need to fix it. But if it's easy to do new work in a nicer language (to my taste, Zig is definitely that), why not? Then maybe rewrite some preprocessor-heavy C code using comptime.
The main thing holding this back (though it's already happening) is that Zig is pre-1.0. That imposes a maintenance burden which not everyone is willing to take on. But that won't last forever.
Now that you mention it I forgot an important one! I want to see the next VLC. And in fact J-B has mentioned on IRC that he would be interested to see contributions to the project using Zig.
I much prefer the pattern I've noticed with the recent generation of Go projects. What I mean is that I find myself more and more often going to a project's repository to check for an issue or open a pull request, only to find that it is written in Go. After the initial hype cycle, Go silently started being the engine many useful tools were written in. While I understand that Zig needs to have some level of getting the word out early on, ultimately having great projects arrive that are written in Zig (that don't need a "written in Zig" tag line as a sort of marketing gimmick) would be the best statement. This pattern I've observed with Go holds true for projects written in TypeScript, Python, and even C as well but Go is the more recent entry.
Effectively, less focus on slogans and more on great projects that solve actual problems. Sometimes moving in silence can speak volumes. (In chess, there's a saying: "Move in silence. Only speak when it's time to say, 'Checkmate.'")
I rather love three specific projects that are rather vocal about Go actually.
TamaGo, TinyGo and the Go compiler toolchain itself.
As they are all good examples regarding Go's suitability for systems programming, regardless of the usual discussion of what is systems programming about.
These are great but none of them would be considered "recent generation" for this scope and it actually highlights the point rather well. Those projects started before this resurgence in Go and the first two are likely branding artifacts of the Go vs Rust period that the open source software engineering field was in at the time.
A good example of what I mean is a project like Ollama. If you look at the repository's main page, the only hints that it is written in Go are in the file tree, the GitHub language graph, and the topic labels. This is a project that was started in 2023 and exemplifies the lack of necessity to brand the project with "written in Go" likely because Go has really taken hold in CLI application development. (This could have easily been called Gollama. :D)
We don't have VC money so the only endgame is to gift Zig to people who happen to find it an effective tool, so that they can make more software you can love.
No, the plan is to build a simple general purpose language. Lots of folks already enjoy using Zig, and not every language has to be in direct competition with others.
I think Zig is definitely an alternative for programmers who are too dumb to grok idiomatic Rust - sadly I am one of them. Go is more meant for middleware and services programming and is a simple, consistent language that won't go away as it has now been enterprise adopted.
To be fair, he said the Rust community has little real-world respect. Linux considering the inclusion of Rust on technical merit is unrelated to the bunch of yahoos who have made a certain technology their identity.
I have a hard time believing that as well. What is the definition of community? Is it the RIIR fanboys? Is it /r/rust? Is it users.rust-lang.org?
Each of these subcommunities is quite sizable, and the last two definitely make an effort to squash RIIR-type overzealotry.
If you're still going to define the Rust community by the latter, it would be fair game to define the C/C++ community by the very vocal people who insist that there's nothing wrong with the lack of memory-safety in those languages.
> Is it the RIIR fanboys? Is it /r/rust? Is it users.rust-lang.org?
Does it matter? Which one of those do you think has the respect of the real world? I'd say none of them. Frankly, I have never heard of these communities (if we are to call them that), and if I had to guess I'd say their only claim to fame is writing silly comments on the internet, which certainly doesn't garner respect even on the internet, let alone in the real world.
> the last two definitely make an effort to squash RIIR-type overzealotry.
A further indication of not having respect. "Quiet you, you're making me look bad" is not something someone who already has respect is concerned with. Maybe someone seeking respect.
> Which one of those do you think has the respect of the real world?
Judging by the direction of C++ apologists these days - probably the people that promote Rust as a better LLVM-compiled language than it's alternatives? Renouncing them would kinda mean renouncing the concept of IR as a whole, which coincidentally seems to be the saving grace of the C programming language too. Without intermediate representation, both languages are unfit for commercial or optimization-sensitive applications.
The entire world of compiled languages has always been a ravenous and ego-fuelled madhouse. This recent attempt to slough off the discourse onto the Rust community is stupid, because if we dig down to the compiler level we're literally arguing over semantics. If you wouldn't call LLVM or Valgrind advocates "overzealous" then you probably don't have a rational reason to say it to Rust advocates either. And I just say that as a guy who wants my kernel to not suck balls.
You've precisely pinpointed the nuance that seems to elude so many: the distinction between the technical merits of Rust and the often overzealous antics of its most ardent adherents.
It's amusing how some conflate corporate adoption with universal admiration for a community's demeanor. Perhaps if more could separate the tool from its torchbearers, we'd have fewer misguided defenses and more meaningful discourse.
Meanwhile it is already shipping on Android Linux regardless of upstream, while Microsoft ships it on Windows, is making use of TockOS for firmware like on Pluton security CPU.
This is wrong. There is a lot of respect for rust, being used by Microsoft, Google, etc. (and i'd argue its a bad thing because it's stifling innovation and sucking up a lot of air for people who want temporal memory safety without all the... technical baggage that rust cones with)
This understates what Zig has accomplished. The GeneralPurposeAllocator used in Debug or ReleaseSafe modes will detect use-after-free, double-free, and memory leaks. This isn't a second tool and a bunch of flags which you have to set up and use, it's literally the default choice for memory allocation.
Zig also has bounds checking, and is null safe: these are important ingredients in spacial and temporal memory safety, respectively. The bounds checks can be turned off, but length is part of an array type, and slices include the runtime length, so it's still doing much better than the classic degrade-to-pointer you get with C (C++ doesn't use arrays much but it shares the problem in a more complex way). Runtime safety can be turned on and off on a per-block basis, which in the right hands gives fine-grained control.
Which isn't to say you're wrong: in Zig, you manage memory, and that means that memory bugs are not only possible, but they will happen and must be found and corrected in testing. But saying it's "just like" C and C++ is pushing it imho.
Zig is aiming to make memory bugs as easy or hard to detect as ordinary logic bugs, the kind of thing which it's tractable to detect and correct for with rigorous testing. It also has much better support for arenas than any other language, since allocators are explicitly passed: this can conglomerate potential memory bugs into one point in a program's execution. There are more features like this than I can feasibly fit into a Hacker News post.
Saying that Zig is not a memory-safe language is just correct. But it's possible to write memory-safe code in Zig, to say otherwise would be like claiming that you can't traverse a tree in Python because the language won't help the traversal code be bug-free by construction.
The leading example is TigerBeetle, which chose an architecture which statically allocates all memory on load. This prohibits any temporal memory safety problems, leaving only spacial memory bugs as an option. TigerBeetle insists on no bugs at all, and is willing to do the enormous amount of testing which is necessary to get any amount of confidence that the goal is accomplished.
There's a place for a language with manual memory management, which instead focuses on easing the extreme pain and pointless difficulty of writing memory-correct code in C. Zig is doing a great job of becoming that language.
Lets start with controlled types (RAII), generics, type driven programming, tasks and monitors for concurrency and parallel programming, certification profiles for high integrity computing (where people die when bugs happen), formal proofs in the type system, contracts.
My point is not that use-after-free or other resource allocation problems do not exist. The point is that in vanilla C any solution one might come up with is too fragile. Reasonable patterns require a very, very steady hand to work (which means it doesn't scale).
C++ came up with a few consistent language-level RAII-based solutions to the problem. Rust came up with a single big consistent language-level approach. Both Rust and C++ insist on using it in all cases.
What Zig does, and which I like, is that it refocuses the language on tools that make it easy to codify the right thing without making it a cornerstone of the language itself. But without introducing the kind of complexity C++ (and Rust to an extent) is famous for.
At its core, it takes the Modula-2 type system from 1978 and makes is appealing to C devs, with sprinkles of compile time programming on top, not as powerful as Lisp macros.
Much better than raw C, but still it leaves things to be desired in the context of safe systems programming.
Well, Rust makes one BIG bet, and then keeps adding everything else, just like C++ keeps doing.
The thing is: people don't want everything.
For the kind of things that are expected to be build in C and C-inspired languages it just doesn't make sense to have Lisp-like macros, or 2 flavours of macros like in Rust, or the accidental kind of metaprogramming C++ is famous for.
Comptime does the job just fine here, replacing the unpredictable macro mess.
Yes and if assholes like you keep spreading FUD the likelihood of this stuff getting built as add-ons decreases. Your behavior in this thread exactly makes my point about how rust sucks the atmosphere out of the discourse, so thank you I guess.
We have to ban accounts that post like this. I don't want to ban you, so if you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules, we'd appreciate it. That means thoughtful, respectful conversation, regardless of how wrong others are or you feel they are.
Edit: I took a look at your recent comments and you don't seem to be in the habit of doing things like this (that's good!) so it should be easy to fix.
I don't remember Java ever had an endgame during the late 90s or early 00s. There were certainly a lot of ambitious. But on the whole we know or assumed about its ( JVM ) limitations.
There were also languages before or in between. But I dont record any one of them ever had an End Game plan. This phenomenon is entirely new and doesn't exist until certain language's supporter came out. And it has now somewhat popularised by it.
I just asked my local AI chatbot, and they said that this is the endgame for Zig:
Congratulation !!
A.D.2111
All bases of Rust were destroyed.
It seems to be peaceful.
But it is incorrect.
Rust is still alive. Zig must fight against Rust again
And down with them completely!
Good luck.
