For instance I didn't know if 0.15 is new, or from a few months ago. Every time a new release I had to go to Github and check the release date. It doesn't even need to be exact but something like August 2025 would have been fine to give some context of when this was released.
> - async and await keywords removed
I think by all accounts Andrew has continue to show he is extremely pragmatic with every decision, trying to test new and old theories to the limit and pick what is most coherent and best for Zig. Cant wait for 1.0
Zig's approach seems to require users to explicitly call flush for any writes. This reminds me of a similar issue in LLVM's `raw_svector_ostream`. Before a 2015 commit https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project/commit/3d1173ba1a53cab0... , it only called flush at the end, which was efficient. That commit changed this, leading to unnecessarily slow performance. To not break existing users, the 2024 pull request https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project/pull/97704 tries to implement a new interface, but the changes would cause significant churn. @aengelke
Really excited for I/O as an interface!
Clever irony if intentional!
Rust has a cool concept called ownership to prevent memory bugs. This means you have to learn new ideas like lifetimes. For instance, an array doesn't just hold objects; it has a lifetime of its own, so you can only store references that will last at least as long as the array. It's most useful IMHO for programs with many independent lifetimes because it makes writing memory-safe code much easier. It really leans into the concept RAII which comes from C++. You implement types and define what it means to create, copy, "move" and destroy them.
Zig on the other hand feels incredibly lightweight. It's like C, but with way fewer pitfalls and better tools. For instance, tts default DebugAllocator tracks memory leaks at runtime, which is good enough for many situations and makes the language less complex to work with. It is common in Zig to pass Allocators, which makes you think more about pooling allocations and simpler allocation strategies. I think learning low level concepts like memory management, pointers, memory layout, interfacing with the OS etc. is easier is fantastic in Zig.
Rust's memory management did sound neat when I was reading about it. Rust is also more mature, so probably more useful for now. I really like Go's simplicity though, which makes Zig sound interesting too.
I also just remembered Nim. I didn't get very far with it, but it also seemed cool.
Go and Zig are both aggressively small and portable languages, and e.g. prefer explicit `defer` where Rust would handle cleanup implicitly. Unlike Zig, Go and Rust are both widely used and mature ~tier-1 languages with a deep bench of native libraries. However, there's a deep gulf between their philosophies. Go values a shallow learning curve and making code easy to write, whereas Rust values expressivness and making it hard to write bad code. This is not to say that you can't write Good Software in Go or make money with Rust code. However, the languages tend to attract distinct groups of programmers, and there's a reason flamewars crop up between their proponents with unusual regularity.
Zig is notable for targeting C's niches of having lots of structural flexibility in memory management, being good at calling C code, and building C programs. C is the native language of most truly powerful interfaces (operating systems, graphics, cryptography, databases, other programming languages, device drivers, low-level networking, etc.), and programs primarily concerned with interfacing with such things tend to be better off written in C. Working with C code is in the happy path for Zig, while other mainstream programming languages demand significant specialized expertise or wrapper libraries (1). Wrapper libraries aren't always available, are almost always less useful than the original, and only save you /some/ build headaches. This makes Zig a candidate in many situations where C - and /maybe/ C++ - are the only real competition.
In short:
If your interest is learning new ways to think about writing programs, Rust will give you a more distinct perspective than Zig. Like Go, there will be lots of libraries and guides to help you out.
If your interest is in learning to write a kind of program you couldn't in Go and think "closer to the metal", Zig is likely better suited to task.
(1): This isn't nearly as true for C++, but there's still enough impeadence mismatch between idiomatic C and C++ to invite interfacing bugs and wrapper libraries.
Rust coming across as a bit different, from those used to C family languages, has arguably a lot to do with its OCaml[2] (ML) roots.
I do really like Go's simplicity which is part of why Zig sounded interesting to me. Rust is definitely more mature though and "feels" more useful from the outside, but that could also just be all of the "I rewrote X in Rust" projects out there.
I'm surprised to see that Zig is closer to C than Rust, and also surprised that rust isn't _more_ like go. I'll probably start with rust just to try something different.
Like another commenter mentioned, I'm probably going to end up making a couple toy projects in both just to try them out. I don't have much of a reason for either of them at work, so it's just for personal projects and knowledge.
What'd you think of Zig with what you've done so far?
