Comment by AndyKelley
Comment by AndyKelley 10 hours ago
> At its core Zig is marketed as a competitor to C, not C++/Rust/etc
What gives you this impression?
I directly created Zig to replace C++. I used C++ before I wrote Zig. I wrote Zig originally in C++. I recently ported Chromaprint from C++ to Zig, with nice performance results. I constantly talk about how batching is superior to RAII.
Everyone loves to parrot this "Zig is to C as Rust is to C++" nonsense. It's some kind of mind virus that spreads despite any factual basis.
I don't mean to disparage you in particular, this is like the 1000th time I've seen this.
You have pretty explicitly framed Zig as a C replacement yourself, e.g.: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gv2I7qTux7g
More broadly, I think the observation tends to get repeated because C and Zig share a certain elegance and simplicity (even if C's elegance has dated). C++ is many things, but it's hardly elegant or simple.
I don't think anyone denies that Zig can be a C++ replacement, but that's hardly unusual, so can many other languages (Rust, Swift, etc). What's noteworthy here is that Zig is almost unique in having the potential to be a genuine C replacement. To its (and your) great credit, I might add.
>> At its core Zig is marketed as a competitor to C, not C++/Rust/etc, which makes me think it's harder to write working code that won't leak or crash than in other languages. Zig embraces manual memory management as well.
@GP: This is not a great take. All four languages are oriented around manual memory management. C++ inherits all of the footguns of C, whereas Zig and Rust try to sand off the rough edges.
Manual memory management is and will always remain necessary. The only reason someone writing JS scripts don't need to worry about managing their memory is because someone has already done that work for them.