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There is nothing new under the Sun. However, some languages manifest as good rewrites of older languages. Rust is that for C++. Zig is that for C. Rust is the

There is nothing new under the Sun. However, some languages manifest as good rewrites of older languages. Rust is that for C++. Zig is that for C. Rust is the small, beautiful language hiding inside of Modern C++. Ownership isn't new. It's the core tenet of RAII. Rust just pulls it out of the backwards-compatible kitchen sink and builds it into the type system. Rust is worth learning just so that you can fully experience that lens of software development. Zig is Modern C development encapsulated in a new language. Most importantly, it dodges Rust and C++'s biggest mistake, not passing allocators into containers and functions. All realtime development has to rewrite their entire standard libraries, like with the EASTL. On top of the great standard library design, you get comptime, native build scripts, (err)defer, error sets, builtin simd, and tons of other small but important ideas. It's just a really good language that knows exactly what it is and who its audience is.

ninetyninenine 10mo ago
>Rust is that for C++ No it's not. Rust has roots in functional languages. It is completely orthoganol to C++.
- jasode 10mo ago
  Graydon Hoare, a former C++ programmer on Mozilla Firefox and the original creator of Rust, acknowledges that for many people, Rust has become a viable alternative to C++ : https://graydon2.dreamwidth.org/307291.html https://graydon2.dreamwidth.org/307291.html And on slide #4, he mentions that "C++ is well past expiration date" : https://venge.net/graydon/talks/intro-talk-2.pdf https://venge.net/graydon/talks/intro-talk-2.pdf It's possible that Graydon's earliest private versions of Rust the 4 years prior to that pdf were an OCaml-inspired language but it's clear that once the team of C++ programmers at Mozilla started adding their influences, they wanted it to be a cleaner version of C++. That's also how the rest of the industry views it.
  - krona 10mo ago
    > Rust has become a viable alternative to C++ Alternative yes, derivative no. Rust doesn't approach C++'s metaprogramming features, and it probably shouldn't given how it seems to be used. It's slightly self-serving for browser devs to claim Rust solves all relevant problems in their domain and therefore eclipses C++, but to me in the scientific and financial space it's a better C, making tradeoffs I don't see as particularly relevant. I say this as a past contributor to the Rust std lib.
  - ninetyninenine 10mo ago
    So? Zig, D, and C are also alternatives to C++. It’s a class of languages that have zero cost abstractions. Rust is NOT a beautiful language hiding inside of C++. It is not an evolution of C++. I’m pointing out that what you said is objectively wrong. Can rust replace C++ as a programming language that has a fast performance profile due to zero cost abstractions? Yes. In the same way that Haskell can replace Python, yes it can.
renewiltord 10mo ago
> Most importantly, it dodges Rust and C++'s biggest mistake, not passing allocators into containers and functions Funny. This was a great sell to me. I wonder why it isn’t the blurb. Maybe it isn’t a great sell to others. The problem for me with so many of these languages is that they’re always eager to teach you how to write a loop when I couldn’t care less and would rather see the juice. However, nowadays with comprehensive books like this, LLM tools can better produce good results for me as I try it out. Thank you.
- obviouslynotme 10mo ago
  Very, very few people outside of foundational system software, HFT shops, and game studios understand why it's a great selling point. Everyone else likes the other points and don't realize the actual selling point of the language.
simonask 10mo ago
I don't know man, Rust's borrowing semantics are pretty new under the sun, and actually do change the way you think about software. It's a pretty momentous paradigm shift. Zig is nice too, but it's not that.
- rjzzleep 10mo ago
  To call Rust syntax beautiful is a stretch. It seems that way in the beginning but then quickly devolves into a monstrosity when you start doing more complex things. Zig on the other specifically addresses syntax shortcomings in part of C. And it does it well. That claim of rust making C more safe because it’s more readable applies to Zig more than it does to Rust. I feel like the reason the rust zealots lobby like crazy to embed rust everywhere is twofold. One is that they genuinely believe in it and the other is that they know that if other languages that address one of the main rust claims without all the cruft gains popularity they lose the chance of being permanently embdedded in places like the kernel. Because once they’re in it’s a decade long job market
  - hnarn 10mo ago
    > they know that if other languages that address one of the main rust claims without all the cruft gains popularity they lose the chance of being permanently embdedded in places like the kernel First of all, I'm really opposed to saying "the kernel". I am sure you're talking about the Linux kernel, but there are other kernels (BSD, Windows etc.) that are certainly big enough to not call it "the" kernel, and that may also have their own completely separate "rust-stories". Secondly, I think the logic behind this makes no sense, primarily because Rust at this point is 10 years old from stable and almost 20 years old from initial release; the adoption into the Linux kernel wasn't exactly rushed. Even if it was, why would Rust adoption in the Linux kernel exclude adoption of another language as well, or a switch to another, if it's better? The fact that Rust was accepted at all to begin with aside from C disproves the assumption, because clearly that kernel is open for "better" languages. The _simplest_ explanation to why Rust has succeeded is that it's solves actual problems, not that "zealots" are lobbying for it to ensure they "have a job".
kibwen 10mo ago
> Rust and C++'s biggest mistake, not passing allocators into containers and functions Rather, basing its entire personality around this philosophy is Zig's biggest mistake. If you want to pass around allocators in C++ or Rust, you can just go ahead and do that. But the reason people don't isn't because it's impossible in those languages, it's because the overwhelming majority of the time it's a lot of ceremony for no benefit. Like, surely people see that in C itself there's nothing stopping anyone from passing around allocators, and yet almost nobody ever does. Ever wonder why that is?
pron 10mo ago
I think that describing Zig as a "rewrite of C" (good or otherwise) is as helpful as describing Python as a rewrite of Fortran. Zig does share some things with C - the language is simple and values explicitness - but at its core is one of the most sophisticated (and novel) programming primitives we've ever seen: A general and flexible partial evaluation engine with access to reflection. That makes the similarities to C rather superficial. After all, Zig is as expressive as C++. > Most importantly, it dodges Rust and C++'s biggest mistake, not passing allocators into containers and functions I think that is just a symptom of a broader mistake made by C++ and shared by Rust, which is a belief (that was, perhaps, reasonable in the eighties) that we could and should have a language that's good for both low-level and high-level programming, and that resulted in compromises that disappoint both goals.
- LexiMax 10mo ago
  To me, the fact that Zig has spent so long in development disqualifies it as being a "rewrite of C." To be clear, I really like Zig. But C is also a relatively simple language to both understand and implement because it doesn't have many features, and the features it does have aren't overly clever. Zig is a pretty easy language to learn, but the presence of comptime ratchets up the implementation difficulty significantly. A true C successor might be something like Odin. I am admittedly not as tuned into the Odin language as I am Zig, but I get the impression that despite being started six months after Zig, the language is mostly fully implemented as envisioned, and most of the work is now spent polishing the compiler and building out the standard library, tooling and package ecosystem.
  - pron 10mo ago
    I don't think it's the implementation that's delaying Zig's stabilisation, but the design. I'm also not sure comptime makes the implementation all that complicated. Lisp macros are more powerful than comptime (comptime is weaker by design) and they don't make Lisp implementation complicated.
    - LexiMax 10mo ago

ninetyninenine 10mo ago

>Rust is that for C++ No it's not. Rust has roots in functional languages. It is completely orthoganol to C++.

jasode 10mo ago
Graydon Hoare, a former C++ programmer on Mozilla Firefox and the original creator of Rust, acknowledges that for many people, Rust has become a viable alternative to C++ : https://graydon2.dreamwidth.org/307291.html https://graydon2.dreamwidth.org/307291.html And on slide #4, he mentions that "C++ is well past expiration date" : https://venge.net/graydon/talks/intro-talk-2.pdf https://venge.net/graydon/talks/intro-talk-2.pdf It's possible that Graydon's earliest private versions of Rust the 4 years prior to that pdf were an OCaml-inspired language but it's clear that once the team of C++ programmers at Mozilla started adding their influences, they wanted it to be a cleaner version of C++. That's also how the rest of the industry views it.
- krona 10mo ago
  > Rust has become a viable alternative to C++ Alternative yes, derivative no. Rust doesn't approach C++'s metaprogramming features, and it probably shouldn't given how it seems to be used. It's slightly self-serving for browser devs to claim Rust solves all relevant problems in their domain and therefore eclipses C++, but to me in the scientific and financial space it's a better C, making tradeoffs I don't see as particularly relevant. I say this as a past contributor to the Rust std lib.
- ninetyninenine 10mo ago
  So? Zig, D, and C are also alternatives to C++. It’s a class of languages that have zero cost abstractions. Rust is NOT a beautiful language hiding inside of C++. It is not an evolution of C++. I’m pointing out that what you said is objectively wrong. Can rust replace C++ as a programming language that has a fast performance profile due to zero cost abstractions? Yes. In the same way that Haskell can replace Python, yes it can.

renewiltord 10mo ago

> Most importantly, it dodges Rust and C++'s biggest mistake, not passing allocators into containers and functions Funny. This was a great sell to me. I wonder why it isn’t the blurb. Maybe it isn’t a great sell to others. The problem for me with so many of these languages is that they’re always eager to teach you how to write a loop when I couldn’t care less and would rather see the juice. However, nowadays with comprehensive books like this, LLM tools can better produce good results for me as I try it out. Thank you.

obviouslynotme 10mo ago
Very, very few people outside of foundational system software, HFT shops, and game studios understand why it's a great selling point. Everyone else likes the other points and don't realize the actual selling point of the language.

simonask 10mo ago

I don't know man, Rust's borrowing semantics are pretty new under the sun, and actually do change the way you think about software. It's a pretty momentous paradigm shift. Zig is nice too, but it's not that.

rjzzleep 10mo ago
To call Rust syntax beautiful is a stretch. It seems that way in the beginning but then quickly devolves into a monstrosity when you start doing more complex things. Zig on the other specifically addresses syntax shortcomings in part of C. And it does it well. That claim of rust making C more safe because it’s more readable applies to Zig more than it does to Rust. I feel like the reason the rust zealots lobby like crazy to embed rust everywhere is twofold. One is that they genuinely believe in it and the other is that they know that if other languages that address one of the main rust claims without all the cruft gains popularity they lose the chance of being permanently embdedded in places like the kernel. Because once they’re in it’s a decade long job market
- hnarn 10mo ago
  > they know that if other languages that address one of the main rust claims without all the cruft gains popularity they lose the chance of being permanently embdedded in places like the kernel First of all, I'm really opposed to saying "the kernel". I am sure you're talking about the Linux kernel, but there are other kernels (BSD, Windows etc.) that are certainly big enough to not call it "the" kernel, and that may also have their own completely separate "rust-stories". Secondly, I think the logic behind this makes no sense, primarily because Rust at this point is 10 years old from stable and almost 20 years old from initial release; the adoption into the Linux kernel wasn't exactly rushed. Even if it was, why would Rust adoption in the Linux kernel exclude adoption of another language as well, or a switch to another, if it's better? The fact that Rust was accepted at all to begin with aside from C disproves the assumption, because clearly that kernel is open for "better" languages. The _simplest_ explanation to why Rust has succeeded is that it's solves actual problems, not that "zealots" are lobbying for it to ensure they "have a job".

kibwen 10mo ago

> Rust and C++'s biggest mistake, not passing allocators into containers and functions Rather, basing its entire personality around this philosophy is Zig's biggest mistake. If you want to pass around allocators in C++ or Rust, you can just go ahead and do that. But the reason people don't isn't because it's impossible in those languages, it's because the overwhelming majority of the time it's a lot of ceremony for no benefit. Like, surely people see that in C itself there's nothing stopping anyone from passing around allocators, and yet almost nobody ever does. Ever wonder why that is?

pron 10mo ago

I think that describing Zig as a "rewrite of C" (good or otherwise) is as helpful as describing Python as a rewrite of Fortran. Zig does share some things with C - the language is simple and values explicitness - but at its core is one of the most sophisticated (and novel) programming primitives we've ever seen: A general and flexible partial evaluation engine with access to reflection. That makes the similarities to C rather superficial. After all, Zig is as expressive as C++. > Most importantly, it dodges Rust and C++'s biggest mistake, not passing allocators into containers and functions I think that is just a symptom of a broader mistake made by C++ and shared by Rust, which is a belief (that was, perhaps, reasonable in the eighties) that we could and should have a language that's good for both low-level and high-level programming, and that resulted in compromises that disappoint both goals.

LexiMax 10mo ago
To me, the fact that Zig has spent so long in development disqualifies it as being a "rewrite of C." To be clear, I really like Zig. But C is also a relatively simple language to both understand and implement because it doesn't have many features, and the features it does have aren't overly clever. Zig is a pretty easy language to learn, but the presence of comptime ratchets up the implementation difficulty significantly. A true C successor might be something like Odin. I am admittedly not as tuned into the Odin language as I am Zig, but I get the impression that despite being started six months after Zig, the language is mostly fully implemented as envisioned, and most of the work is now spent polishing the compiler and building out the standard library, tooling and package ecosystem.
- pron 10mo ago
  I don't think it's the implementation that's delaying Zig's stabilisation, but the design. I'm also not sure comptime makes the implementation all that complicated. Lisp macros are more powerful than comptime (comptime is weaker by design) and they don't make Lisp implementation complicated.
  - LexiMax 10mo ago