> I don’t like the Rust culture. There’s no better way to put it.

This is just so weird to me, because I would say the same about Zig.

I tried to get into Zig even chatted with Loris Cro when he was streaming. I was looking to explore what my Rust project could look like in Zig but there were features simply missing that I couldn't do without. The entire interaction was mostly about how bad Rust is and how I could just do something different in Zig (completely misunderstanding my ask, with little interest to explore my actual requirements).

I remember watching HN and seeing every time there was something Rust related trending, there was ALWAYS a post made shortly after trying to hype Zig and this went on for like 4 years.

I'm not a Rust contributor and I don't care for some of the challenges that come with Rust, but I love what it accomplished and I find it does it very well. Back then I found the Rust community had interest and respect for Zig, so the discourse was very much one sided.

> This is just so weird to me, because I would say the same about Zig.

Then why is it weird if you're saying the same thing? Different programming languages appeal to programmers with different tastes, and so it makes sense that some programmers would be drawn to language X and dislike language Y, while others would be the opposite.

I feel this way about most Hashi tools, they just seem massively overrated to me.

Ghostty is fine I guess, I find it to be way buggier than iterm with a fraction of the features.

Zig is fine, has some cool stuff, the community seems roughly the same as the rust, with again just way less features.

The rest of the hashi tools are fine, I don’t really use any of them anymore. Vault was a big deal at some point I guess

I’ve worked with people who I appreciate for their unapologetic willingness to be who they are. I might not agree with their opinions and think they’re a little extreme, but I’m glad people like them exist and enjoy seeing what they devote their time to. Based on the rest of Mitchell’s response, I think something like that is what is appreciated about Zig.

I don’t use Zig, and frequently use Rust, but I’ve never really interacted with the core development team for either. I don’t think it’s necessary to care about whatever culture is driving development once it has sufficient velocity. The Rust I use today is more than enough for my needs. Maybe if I were more involved in open source I would better understand why culture matters, but unfortunately I’m mostly a consumer of it, not a producer.

Culture wars are sadly one of the biggest inhibitors of progress throughout all of technology.

This is weird to me too, especially to say in the present tense in 2026.

I think I get the point about "Rust culture" (although it's too vague to agree or disagree with, probably on purpose).

But in 2026, Rust is fully a commodity language, and especially to compare it to Zig in this angle is bizarre. Even turning my stereotypes to 11 and thinking back to when I worked with a team developing Rust professionally in 2021, I'd say we got mostly ended up hiring "proglang enthusiasts" and not "Rust people." In terms of "cultural dilution" alone Zig is orders of magnitude more culty than Rust because that many fewer people use it.