Comment by brabel a day ago
You’re not familiar with Zig’s culture, I guess. Complain about the lack of documentation and be prepared for the flood of “just read the stdlib code” helpful comments by pretty much everyone who writes Zig right now. Because most APIs are just as hard to use as in this post (check things like HTTP and even basic file system operations) only the strongest survive.
Ai is great at block comments, there is no excuse. Add to that a small anotated usage example written by a human and this whole post would have not existed.
Lack of docs also cripple AI from understanding, so future adoption becomes even more bleak.
If an api or library developer didnt bother doing even bare minimum docs, my confidence in the library drops aswell.
Did they skip testing aswell? Ran the happy path for a day and called it good?
This post sour my interest in zig. Its now obvious to me now why rust took much of its market.
So they're gonna just finnish up their standard lib and THEN spend a year doing nothing but docs for everything they made?
Just getting started is an even bigger reason to have good docs to clearly communicate how the libraries and APIs work!
I wouldn't even read a push request containing a new function if the creator didn't bother writing a short description and usage clarification.
Getting started is a good excuse for limited libraries or support (same situationwith rust). But lack of even basic docs is not acceptable if you want user adoption.
I like Zig, but if we look at the numbers, the difference is probably more to do with funding that anything:
Zig (programming language) - First appeared 8 February 2016; 9 years ago
Rust (programming language) - First appeared January 19, 2012; 13 years ago
Also, Zig at this point isn't really a brand new language anymore. I have comments on their issues dating back to 2018, so it's been a very active language since at least then.
As a senior dev I’m also passionate about docs and communication, and actually kind of love the process of agonizing over a bunch of rST files to get the perfect manual that’s both an on-boarding guide and also a reference of all the nooks and crannies.
I think what I’ve come to realize is that when I feel a barrier toward doing that work, it’s a sign that I don’t actually like the underlying API. I don’t want to document it or craft examples or tutorials because in my mind the API sucks, it’s transitional, and documenting it in its current state is going to somehow lock in a bad interface and further increase the effort required to change and fix it up later.
It's just not reasonable to expect volunteers to write eloquent documentation when it's likely it will just get flushed
That would hurt adoption. I understand things move fast but if you want people to make the switch other than hello world, it has to be at a minimum cosy. Sending them to hell and find your way out isn't a good move long term.
I tried Zig a couple of times and I got that feeling: very powerful and clever language but not really for me, I don't have the headspace, sorry. I need something I can debug after an 8 hours dayjob, a commute and having put the kids to bed. It better be inviting & fun! (Hi, C).
after chasing some insane macro gymnastics whivh are there to make the c portble, i came to understand that zig is more easy to debug than c
Yeah, thinking about this attitude positively, maybe it’s a feature — if only hard core people can comfortably figure it out, you get higher quality contributions?
Not trying to imply that’s an explicit goal (probably instead just a resource problem), but an observation
I think it is a trade off for between zig's development speed and documentation. It is Pre 1.0, extreme beta mode with lots of breaking changes.
Generally speaking I think it is the right trade off for now. Purely inferring from Andrew and the Zig's team online character as I don't know them in person, I think they do care a lot of DX, things like compiling speed and tools. So I think once 1.0 come I won't be surprised if it will have extremely good documentation as well.
And I would argue, writing good, simple, clear, detailed documentation is actually harder than writing code itself.
I've written many APIs. Never have I got it right without first writing lots of tests, finding the rough corners, improving it... and so on. Writing documentation after that is absolutely mandatory for the end result to be a high quality API. As you write how it is meant to work, you will definitely find things that don't really make sense, or that should not be as hard ( I think this post shows just such an API that hasn't gone through this process ). IMHO documentation is NOT optional. The implementation is NOT how you mean for the API to be used.
On the one hand, I totally get that pre 1.0 is the wild west (somewhat) and should be. The team is right in jealously guarding their ability to make changes.
That said, others have pointed out that writing documentation and tests helps improve quality quite a bit, and in this case it would also increase usability. I think I'd agree with this stance, but there is no way I could make the statement that even most of the code I've written for public consumption had excellent documentation or examples. So I've got no leg to stand on there, just the armchair.
> And I would argue, writing good, simple, clear, detailed documentation is actually harder than writing code itself.
All the more reason why it must be done! A little silly but from my armchair maybe it's one of those "start with the interface you want and work backwards", but the problem is that approach can be at odds with mechanical sympathy and we know which side Zig lands on (and arguably should land on based on it's values).
My quick skim of Wikipedia may not be telling the complete story, but it says the initial release was 9 years ago (February 2016). After nearly a decade, I would hope that things would be out of "extreme beta mode," but I guess this isn't the case?
What's the benchmark for how long something can be pre-1.0? Seems like a nonsense argument.
Same as Rust being almost a decade old when the first 1.0 was published.
Making a programming language from scratch is a long endeavor when it's a one man project.
Unstable APIs are a good example of something that's extremely valuable early on.
They unarguably cause confusion for everyone as they change.
But it lets you choose the right abstractions that are going to stick for decades.
If you're going to make a python2 -> python3 transition in your language, make sure it's X0 -> X1.
Contributions to the Zig language or contributions to software using Zig (the latter is the one the post is about as I understand)?
If so, I believe Zig will stay within a niche. Lower entry barriers allow "script kiddies" to easily start withe language, and they eventually will become leading engineers. Only a few people tend to go straight for the highest practice without "playing around". IMHO the reason, why PHP got so popular (it was not good back then, just very very easy to start with).
> Contributions to the Zig language or contributions to software using Zig (the latter is the one the post is about as I understand)?
Yes.
I think a contributor that really wanted to help the ecosystem would start in the stdlib and then start moving outwards. Even if it was LLM-assisted, I think it could be high value.
IIRC Loris already has an engine for building websites with Zig, but making sure that every Zig library has docs (similar to rustdocs) might be a great start. It is incredibly useful to have a resource like rustdocs, both the tooling and the web sites that are easily browsable.
Again, maybe everyone in the Zig ecosystem just has amazing editor setups and massive brains, but I personally really like the ease of browsing rustdoc.
> If so, I believe Zig will stay within a niche. Lower entry barriers allow "script kiddies" to easily start withe language, and they eventually will become leading engineers. Only a few people tend to go straight for the highest practice without "playing around". IMHO the reason, why PHP got so popular (it was not good back then, just very very easy to start with).
I agree, but I'd add that the niche they're aiming for is systems programming, so they're probably fine :). The average hacker there is expecting C/C++ or to be near the metal, and I think Zig is a great fit there. They're likely not going to convince people who write Ruby, but it feels reasonable for C hackers.
Also I want to just be clear that I think Zig has a lot of motivating factors! They're doing amazing things like zig cc, unbelievably easy, "can't believe it's not butter" cross-compilation, their new explicit/managed I/O mechanism, explicit allocators as a default, comptime, better type ergonomics. It's a pretty impressive language.
> already has an engine for building websites with Zig, but making sure that every Zig library has docs
Tbh, this sort of auto-generated docs from source code is not all that useful, since you get that same information right in the IDE via the language server.
The important documentation part that's currently missing is how everything is supposed to work together in the stdlib, not the 'micro-documentation' of what a single type or function does. And for this sort of information it's currently indeed better to look at example code (e.g. the stdlib's testing code).
IMHO it's way too early for this type of high-level documentation, since things change all the time in the stdlib. Putting much work into documenting concepts that are discarded again anyway doesn't make much sense.
The key problem with Zig nowadays is how much of its community and adoption is driven by anti-Rust sentiment. As a result, while Rust puts beginner onboarding and documentation at the center of its culture, as opposed to the “C neckbeard”'s culture, Zig is going the other way around.
(Loris Cro being a key community figure isn't helping in any way, and it's a good remainder that if you don't clear up your community from bullies from the beginning, they will turn your entire community to a miserable place. And that's a shame because from what I've seen, Andrew Kelley seems to be a very cool guy in addition to being very smart).
> The key problem with Zig nowadays is how much of its community and adoption is driven by anti-Rust sentiment. As a result, while Rust puts beginner onboarding and documentation at the center of its culture, as opposed to the “C neckbeard”'s culture, Zig is going the other way around.
Maybe, or maybe the fact that Zig is a small independent project with limited resources has also something to do with it, and this kind of shaming says less about Zig than you'd think.
When I first joined the Zig project, Zig was still using the bootstrap compiler written in C++ that would not free memory (it took more than 4GB to compile the Zig compiler). Some people at the time were asking us to prioritize work on the package manager but Andrew rightfully wanted to prioritize rewriting the compiler instead. In hindsight this was the obviously right decision: a package manager implies that one can very easily add an order of magnitude more code to their project, stressing the performance of the compiler. If we had not prioritized core infrastructure over giving people what they wanted faster, today we would have people complaining that adding a single dependency to their project makes the build impossible to complete.
The Zig project has a huge scope and we are a small independent organization. This makes us extremely nimble and efficient, but it does mean that we need to do things in the order that makes the most sense for the project, not for what the public wants.
The fact that we develop in the open doesn't mean that the language is ready yet.
People that already have the required domain knowledge (and who have a tolerance for breaking changes) will have the opportunity to be early adopters if they wish to do so, others will have to wait for Zig to become more mature. And we do make this clear in releases and all forms of public communication.
We have gone a long way since the bootstrap compiler days, but we are still missing key infrastructure:
- we have a x86_64 custom backend but aarch64 is not complete yet - incremental compilation is showing that we can get instant rebuilds of large projects, but it has missing features and it doesn't work on all platforms yet - we need native fuzzing since AFL keeps regressing everytime a new version of LLVM comes out - for the longest time we haven't had a strong I/O story, now we're finally working on it
The time for paving the road for a new generation of programmers will come (it's in the ZSF mission statement btw), but first we need to finish the plumbing.
> Maybe, or maybe the fact that Zig is a small independent project with limited resources has also something to do with it
Or, maybe it's this kind of redirection and evidence of a victim complex. Part of the reason that there's a patina of anti-Rust sentiment includes the dismissive attitude and swipes you, a the VP of Community at the Zig Software Foundation, take towards Rust and Rust developers by writing about topics you aren't involved in and don't have a solid grasp of.
https://kristoff.it/blog/raii-rust-linux/ https://lobste.rs/s/hxerht/raii_rust_linux_drama#c_gbn1q8
Or similarly, comments like this one in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/context?id=44994749
Loris really isn't a person worth engaging with honestly, don't waste your time.
I just wanted to clarify that I point this out to say that there was a real opportunity in this thread to try to push back on the language wars perception. To me, good community management would be taking the opportunity to say:
* Sorry you feel that way, we try not to foster an inclusive environment that avoids language flamewars and negativity towards other languages
* Some specific examples of policies that are enacted in community spaces towards that end (e.g. some large programming language discord servers have specific rules against low effort language bashing content and memes)
* Take the opportunity to link back to positive things that the Zig team has said about Rust and places where folks have recommended it.
> […] Zig was still using the bootstrap compiler written in C++ that would not free memory […]
That sounds strange. Modern C++ requires very little manual memory management, at least when you're writing something high-level like a compiler. C++11 had been out for years when development on Zig started. Were they writing C++ old-school as C-with-classes and malloc() everywhere? Why not use a more appropriate language for the first prototype of a compiler for a brand new language?
Zig is not really a handmade project, case in point both Andrew and I are blocked on social media by the two gods of the handmade movement (casey and john) and, according to their die hard fans, Andrew gave a talk at the last handmade conference that caused the community to split apart (the reality is a bit more complex than this, but Andrew's talk is certainly one that you wouldn't see at their new "better software" conference).
Andrew's talk is here (second event after the two people chatting while sitting on chairs): https://handmadecities.com/media/seattle-2024/hms-day-one/
Here you can see a particularly funny (but also sad) reaction by one of these people https://drive.proton.me/urls/MB1EB4EF34#YZdvmAvBFp1C
> using game engines versus doing the whole computer from scratch for a game
That said you are doing yourself a disservice if you think that not using an engine to make a game is a form of "anti-intellectualism".
Thanks for clarification.
Depends on the attitude, not using an engine, because one wants to learn the whole stack, makes all sense, after all people need to learn how to make game engines, if nothing else for the next generation.
Not using one out of spite, because we do everything handmade over here attitude, is a completely different matter.
Here is another comment on the whole Handmade-Kerfuffle from one of the presenters:
https://wiki.xxiivv.com/site/2025.html (the entry under 19b)
It seems this was a right vs. left (or liberal) split.
Unfortunately for everyone, people like you tie their entire identity and income to specific technologies, movements, or communities—becoming deeply tribal in the process. When something or someone undermines their sense of security—even with constructive criticism—they react defensively, often to the point of ignorance.
All this, combined with the fact that Zig, at best is still in beta quality and at worst amounts to a massive waste of everyone’s time, makes it unsurprising that people block you and simply refuse to engage with your loud community efforts, endless churn and crust tied to beta quality compiler.
> Zig is not really a handmade project, case in point both Andrew and I are blocked on social media by the two gods of the handmade movement (casey and john) and, according to their die hard fans, Andrew gave a talk at the last handmade conference that caused the community to split apart (the reality is a bit more complex than this, but Andrew's talk is certainly one that you wouldn't see at their new "better software" conference).
> Andrew's talk is here (second event after the two people chatting while sitting on chairs): https://handmadecities.com/media/seattle-2024/hms-day-one/
> Here you can see a particularly funny (but also sad) reaction by one of these people https://drive.proton.me/urls/MB1EB4EF34#YZdvmAvBFp1C
Regarding the links you posted:
In the first, at 2:30:40, Andrew Kelly publicly calls out a specific author of a competing technology in exaggerated, caricatured, and fabricated context.
In the second video, yet another author of a yet another competing technology directly points out this unapologetic and concerning behavior on Andrew Kelly’s part.
And now you—“VP of Community @ Zig Software Foundation”—assert your “righteous” stance by sharing these videos, while ironically pointing out that some of those same individuals (of competing technologies fame) block you on social media.
Too bad that doing your job probably means being as loud and visible online as possible to spread the molecules of Zig no matter what.
That is actually a valid point on expectation given the attracted people's demographic.
I will hopefully wait for comments from Ghostty, Bun or Tigerbeetle Devs.
On another point that is wroth mentioning, I hope Andrew will at least put it out publicly, IMO Zig isn't Anti-Rust. But it did attract the type of people who are not too happy with Rust. I dont remember a single time Zig came out to bash anything about Rust. It isn't Anti anything at all. Its goal is to be a decent C replacement as very high level assembly languages, aiming at Data Oriented Design with some interesting features, and extremely fast compilation speed. ( Which was the reason why I was interested in it in the first place. I miss Turbo Pascal )
Zig reminds me of the old school, traditional projects. It isn't perfect for everything, it never claims to be, if you like it, use it. If not, there are plenty of options out there.
At least Ghostty Dev seems to be enjoying it almost every day.
I don't think Andrew is anti-Rust. But Loris, whose hn profile says he's “vp of community of the zig software foundation” is as anti-Rust as you can get: he's pathologically obsessed by Rust and spent significant amount of energy outright insulting Rust maintainers here or on Twitter (when he's not buzzy writing anti-Rust rant on his blog).
But as you say, there's no reason why Zig ought to be anti-Rust, both language are are fresh attempts at low level programming, both highly opinionated and with very different philosophies and trade offs and both language can cohabit peacefully (I've heard good things about using the Zig toolchain for cross compilation of C dependencies in rust projects, so the existence of Zig already has had a positive impact on the Rust ecosystem).
Tell that to the “VP of community @ zig software foundation” who spend a significant fraction of its time insulting Rust maintainers or mere users here or on Twitter when he's not busy writing anti-Rust rants on his blog.
(You won't have to seek long in his HN history to find an instance of such behavior)
I do not think this is a viable excuse any more.
I am just editing docs now that Claude Code writes for me. I am fanatic about developer docs (and I guess an exception as I love writing them) but with a set of concise instructions for CC and some writing style examples I get 90% there, sometimes 99%.
If you believe you don't have time for the last 1--10% you should not be in charge of writing any API used by anyone but yourself. Just my two c.