Zig is a moving target. 0.15 -> 0.16 includes some massive structural changes concerning IO and async/threading.

Claude has absolutely no idea what it's doing with bleeding edge zig unless you feed it source and guide it closely (in which case it's useful for focused work) - I'm building a game engine & tcp/udp servers with it and it requires a hands-on approach and actually understanding what's being built.

I imagine these are not really concerns with rust at this point.

In my ideal world the team behind bun would be putting in the work to keep up with modern zig, but it's starting to look like they are running mostly on vibes in which case rust might be a better choice.

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rudedogg 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> it requires a hands-on approach and actually understanding what's being built.

I think this is true regardless of what language you’re using.

I’ve built a lot in Zig and there’s no difference between vibing stuff in it versus TypeScript/React. Claude can “one-shot” them both, and will mimic existing code or grep the standard library to figure everything out.

	▲	dns_snek 2 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		[delayed]

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10000truths 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> unless you feed it source

Which isn't particularly difficult - the language docs and std source come with the installation, so all you need to do is tell Claude where those directories are in your skill/plugin/CLAUDE.md.

> and guide it closely (in which case it's useful for focused work)

It does struggle sometimes with writing code that compiles and uses the APIs correctly. My approach to that so far has been to write test blocks describing the desired interface + semantics, and asking Claude to (`zig test` -> fix errors) in a loop until all the tests pass.

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allthetime 4 hours ago | parent [-]

You're already at a disadvantage having to stuff the context and spend extra tokens coercing the model in the correct direction compared to it already knowing what to do (rust, ts, go, etc.)

Here, I just did a quick test with claude.

1. "make a simple tcp echo server that uses rust"

compiles and runs - took a few seconds to generate.

2. "make a simple tcp echo server that uses zig"

result: compile error, took literal minutes of spinning and thinking to generate

response: "ziglang.org isn't in the allowed domains. Let me check if there's another way, or just verify the code compiles conceptually and present it clean."

/opt/homebrew/Cellar/zig/0.15.2/lib/zig/std/Io/Writer.zig:1200:9: error: ambiguous format string; specify {f} to call format method, or {any} to skip it @compileError("ambiguous format string; specify {f} to call format method, or {any} to skip it"); ^~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

3. "make a simple tcp echo server that uses zig 0.16"

result: compile error:

zig build-exe main.zig main.zig:30:21: error: no field named 'io' in struct 'process.Init.Minimal' const io = init.io; ^~

4. "make a simple tcp echo server that uses zig 0.15"

result: compile error

zig build-exe main.zig /nix/store/as1zlvrrwwh69ii56xg6yd7f6xyjx8mv-zig-0.15.2/lib/std/Io/Writer.zig:1200:9: error: ambiguous format string; specify {f} to call format method, or {any} to skip it @compileError("ambiguous format string; specify {f} to call format method, or {any} to skip it");

Rust took seconds and just works. Zig examples took minutes and don't work out of the box. The DX & velocity isn't even close.

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dimator 3 hours ago | parent [-]

i mean, if zig is doing its best (inadvertently) at shooing off slop jockeys, then i already have more confidence that:

1. the language and stdlib are written by people who know what they're doing 2. packages in the ecosystem, at the barest level, are written by those who didn't leave after a few compile errors they couldn't reason about

	▲	Philpax 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		The agents will churn their way through the errors. The new users whose learning material is out of date, as well as the existing users that have an insurmountable task in updating their code, will give up instead. I think the changes are improvements, but there's a real cost to language churn, and every time it happens, the graveyard of projects grows just that little bit larger.

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5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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