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0 pointspron5y ago0 comments

> and rust is taking inspiration from it already

But C++/Rust can never have Zig's primary feature -- simplicity. Zig's power is not that it has comptime, but that it has little else.

> I can't wait before Zig2 comes and eventually adds generics…

No need. Zig gives you the same capabilities as generics do, only through a separate feature that other languages also have in addition to generics. In other words, it has generics, but without having generics as a special construct. Zig recognises that once you have that other feature (compile-time introspection) you don't need generics as a separate construct, but they can be just an instance of that single construct.

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littlestymaar5y ago· 3 in thread

> But C++/Rust can never have Zig's primary feature -- simplicity

Sounds like a Go pitch, except Zig ain't Go. And while comptime is a cool feature, it's also a really complex one!

> In other words, it has generics, but without having generics as a special construct. Zig recognises that once you have that other feature (compile-time introspection) you don't need generics as a separate construct, but they can be just an instance of that single construct.

This has advantages (only one feature to know), but it also has a big drawback: the lack of orthogonality. C is also simple, for instance it has no concept of errors (only return values) or arrays (only pointers), but most people won't consider this a good idea (and Zig didn't follow C on either of those two design points)

Zig is cool, but I hoped the “generics are too complex of a feature” meme would die now that Go is getting generics, and I'd be really sad to see come back…

pronOP5y ago

> it's also a really complex one!

No, it's a very simple one, so much so that it's erasable: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24293611 And still it is probably the most complex aspect of Zig.

> Zig is cool, but I hoped the “generics are too complex of a feature” meme would die now that Go is getting generics, and I'd be really sad to see come back…

You've misunderstood me. Generics are a good thing -- if that's all you have. But if you have generics and procedural macros, it turns out that you can do the work of both with a feature that's simpler than either. The capability generics add is a very important one, but given that low-level languages need another one as well, it turns out that generics can be subsumed into that one without being a separate and additional construct. Zig has generic types and concepts/typeclasses; these just aren't atomic language constructs.

littlestymaar5y ago

> But if you have generics and procedural macros, it turns out that you can do the work of both with a feature that's simpler than either.

Here I think we just have a different subjective perception of what simplicity is. I much prefer have two orthogonal systems which do their own business than having a single more powerful tool than do both (like having slices + references instead of the all powerful pointer)

Anecdotal note: more than 10 years ago, the Go team pitched why they didn't need generics nor macros, because code generation would solve both problems (+ others), and now they're on their way back to add generics to Go (with a lot of hassle).

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rightbyte5y ago

"C is also simple, for instance it has no concept of [...] arrays (only pointers)"

That is a confusing part with C. C do have a concept of arrays, but not as function arguments. You notice it first with multidimensional arrays.

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