> This means that large parts of what used to be included in the compiler executable are now shipped in source form instead, including:

For some strange reason now it became fashionable to treat compiled languages as if they were scripting languages.

Go did the same a few releases ago.

Just ship a JIT as well, if the goal is to have each user compile the code.

I truly don’t understand what value a JIT would provide here. Especially in Zigs case. The language allows for full pre-compilation and the compiler is so blazingly fast it’ll finish compiling faster than the startup time of some interpreted languages. So what would adding an interpreter/JIT achieve? Absolutely nothing.

Seems to me the idea of using a JIT here is just because it’s fashionable, not because it solves a real problem.

Why a JIT when they have AOT? Shipping the source code means they can ship the same thing to every target instead of dealing with multiple binaries, at the small cost of compilation the first time you use it.