[kwlug-disc] Notes into "Rust or C" bucket

[Doug Moen]

Zig adds a lot to C. It has generalized compile time evaluation, called “comptime”, with types as first class values. This allows you to implement generics, in a way that is simpler and more ergonomic than C++ templates. It has nice platform independent SIMD support, allowing you to perform arithmetic operations on SIMD vectors. There is a "defer" statement like in Go. The standard library is quite a bit more sophisticated than C’s. The Zig compiler supports cross-compilation and cross-linking, so you can build and link Windows or MacOS executables on Linux, a feature I haven't seen anywhere else. Zig will also do these cross builds for C and C++.

On Mon, Oct 13, 2025, at 12:39 AM, William Park via kwlug-disc wrote:
> Hmm... just went through "zig.guide".  Thanks.  Other than elimination 
> of .h files, it doesn't add much to C, just shuffling syntax around.
>
>
> On 2025-10-12 16:24, Chris Frey wrote:
>> On Sun, Oct 12, 2025 at 12:55:34PM -0400, William Park via kwlug-disc wrote:
>>> I just browsed Zig site.  No tutorial!  Geez, they should learn from
>>> Python.  All you need for Python is their official "tutorial" and
>>> "reference".  C was like that, just one book.  Maybe it's because the
>>> author(s) grew up in internet age with blogs, shorts, click baits, etc.
>>> What happened to classic "textbook" style.
>> Was this not satisfactory?
>>
>> 	https://ziglang.org/learn/
>>
>> Specifically, the language reference, std lib docs, and the "zig.guide"?
>>
>> - Chris
>>
>>
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