- Do you like filling out the type annotations in Python (making sure linter check passes)? Do you like TYPES in general?

- Do you like working with memory (crushing memory bugs, solving leaks)?

- Do you prefer imperative or functional approach more?

Hacker News discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46153466

For hobby projects, zig will get you *much* closer to the underlying system. So if your goal is systems programming where you're responsible for and get to play with the system itself. Zig will get you there much faster, and the language wont take much time to learn and have fun with.

Surely someone will now attempt to correct me, by asserting it's impossible for anyone to write safe code without rust, and it's improper for me to even suggest Zig. But I'm enjoying the language a lot. It's easy to pick up and understand, and importantly it gets out of your way quickly so you can build exactly the system you want.

For more complex or professional projects however, I would still recommend Zig but more because I can't stand rust. It bothers me that it rejects valid programs because the compiler is unable to prove what I can. So the additional dance rust requires ruins an otherwise fine language.

edit: my default language before zig was also python, so feels reasonable to also mention that I'm pretty sure it'll be significantly easier to transition from python into Zig rather than into rust. There's a number of idioms and expectations from python that fit well in zig, but dont fit in rust.

If you don't have time to learn both, then learn Zig, as it requires much smaller time investment (though do try to find time for both).

Note that there are a number of domains where Zig might be a practical option in the future, but aren't now due to library support. With Rust, you will reinvent wheels more than most people have an appetite for. In Zig, you will do this for most things.

For some people the huge 'surface area' and strict type system of Rust is a big turn-off, while others want exactly that from a programming language.

Zig is gaining integration into larger projects (Ghostty, TigerBeetle, Roc, Ubers build system come to mind), but it's not yet achieved Rust's success

Disappointingly as a Rust dev, I don't actually see a lot of Rust being used for "systems" development (OS, driver, DB internals, embedded, etc), but increasingly for network services/web services/web stack work, heavily biased towards tokio async driven applications. It's a lot of engineers living further up the stack, leaning on frameworks, and in applications with very large dependency tree footprints. As a % anyways. There's a lot more Rust code out there than Zig.

I think Zig has a far more minimalistic thing going on and I like that. I find its type system a lot more primitive, and would miss ADTs/enums, and the borrow checker etc. but I like its overall philosophy better.

It really depends what you mean by "interesting" :-)

Rust feels like "let's take the best safety features from both", while Zig feels like "let's take the best transparency from both". In a way, Rust's traits are more foreign to C++ than Zig's comptime, as Zig has similar duck typing (though the ergonomics are much cleaner, especially with @compileError).

I see Zig as being a lot more in C tradition and lineage with nicer and safer memory management techniques. Also comptime (Lisp-ish there?)

My two cents

Systems programming can be done in ocaml or any language really where there is some documentation on the runtime how not to trigger the GC or flags that can be passed to custom set GC policy

Mad props to them for picking up my joke and turning it into a recurring donation.

> There are no plans to move the NATS server to Zig.

> Zig will become a Tier 1 NATS client, and Synadia will utilize Zig in resource constrained environments to bridge OT/IT for manufacturing, IIOT, connected cars, robotics and embodied AI.

Still I use jom for building but I may move to Zig build

Conceptually C and C++ are also in that potential solution space, but I'm sure they feel that Zig's properties are superior for what they want.

I might miss your point, but I don't see the difference.

This is what makes TigerBeetle context somewhat special --- in many scenarios, security provided by memory safety is good enough, and any residual correctness bugs/panics are not a big deal. For us, we need to go extra N miles to catch the rest of the bugs as well, and DST is a much finer net for those fishes (given static allocation & single threaded design).