Zig vs Rust. Which one is going to be future?

I think about pros and cons and what to choose for the second (modern) language in addition to C.

@[email protected]

  • slacktoid@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    27
    ·
    1 month ago

    The number of people that genuinely believe this ( I saw the /s) … Tells me that they haven’t written any useful C or C++ code

      • Zink@programming.dev
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        7
        ·
        edit-2
        1 month ago

        Or worked on a similar team where the C & C++ was mostly written over a decade ago by dudes in another country who loved multi threading, and some of the “new” features were half-completed about 5 years ago, and nothing is documented, and oh yeah not a single person who did any of that still works at the company. Team is made of great people but all have been here for 0-3 years.

        The idea of Rust being roughly as fast and low level as C++ but with improvements to memory safety and concurrency sounds heavenly. I know it’s in the back of most of our minds to look into it for the next big project.

    • TehPers@beehaw.org
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      10
      ·
      edit-2
      1 month ago

      I’m not going to say that C is unusable by any means (and I’m not saying you are saying that). It’s a perfectly usable language. I do think that more people would benefit from exploring other options though. Programming languages are tools, not sports teams. People should familiarize themselves with many tools so they always have a good tool to use for any job.

      I think a lot of people believe this because there is some truth to parts of it. I think we see languages like Rust and Zig (and others) popping up to try and solve specific problems better than others.

      As for OP’s post, there is no single “C successor” or anything like that. People will use the best tool they know of for the job whether that’s C, Rust, C++, Zig, Python, C#, etc. Many languages will “replace” C in some projects, and at the same time, C will replace other languages in some projects (likely to a lesser extent though).

      (Not /s this time)

      • slacktoid@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        10
        ·
        1 month ago

        Oh completely. C is here to stay, C has surpassed language and become protocol cause of libc being so centric to Unix like languages. But it needs to be done carefully and thoughtfully. The other languages are solving some of the pain points C has which I think a lot of people would be better off using than C.

        • lad@programming.dev
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          5
          ·
          1 month ago

          Down that path C may become somewhat of an intermediate representation language for binary interfaces. No one would write it by hand, and maybe for the better