I don't think I've ever heard anything positive about Zig. Every time I've seen the project mentioned is them using bizarre black and white moral judgements to justify stupid decisions.

You need to look past this. Zig is an excellent low-level language. Thanks to the comptime features, you can have high-level looking APIs while staying down to the metal. It's not for everyone, obviously, but as a language, it is really good.

You have to be wilfully blind, then. It gets rather frequently praised on HN (as much as any niche language can be), and they certainly don't make black-and-white moral judgements often.