I'm shipping in Rust but any reason to do so in Zig ? What does it offer over Rust ? Something tangible benefit to end user or developer using ai assisted development ?

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rahen 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Use Rust if you're not writing code yourself.

The borrow checker will catch all kinds of bugs that AI-generated code will happily compile in Zig but will blow up as UB at runtime.

Zig's value prop is different and closer to a modern C: it fits in your head and maps fairly closely to assembly. There is no hidden control flow or hidden allocations, so you can tweak performance at a very low level. You're the pilot, not the compiler.

Rust trades the low-level clarity for compiler-enforced safety. If you're not a code artisan or don't care about being one, then please use Rust.

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solatic 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> The borrow checker will catch all kinds of bugs that AI-generated code will happily compile in Zig but will blow up as UB at runtime.

This has not been my experience; Claude does a great job of writing unit tests for the Zig code, and combined with Zig's fuzzing features and a Python-based integration testing suite, I have avoided hitting runtime UB so far. In exchange, I get much faster compile times, which are important for the agentic development loop.

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je42 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

So far claude has been fine to generated zig code. Dont have lots of issues. Tijy local models have more problems with zig, need additional instructions.

In general, what helps is to instruct ai to use test coverage to ensure the cover all edge cases with tests.

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bsaul an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

it's also my opinion. Which makes me wonder : isn't there an opportunity to create a variant of rust that would make absolutely zero compromise on UB and safety at the detriment of user experience ( which we don't care about now, with AI generating the code) ?

Like programming in a kind of super strict IL. Or the opposite : super poweful, super abstract language, yet extremely strict.

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Ygg2 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Use Rust if you want to write in a memory safe, high performance language.

> Zig's value prop is different and closer to a modern C: it fits in your head and it maps fairly closely to assembly.

This can't be correct for the simple reason that it has both a modern optimizing compiler (LLVM) and UB.

A modern compiler will try to autovectorize your code, so you don't really know what the assembly will be.

UB gives compiler license to rewrite your code however it sees fit.

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zuzululu an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Can LLMs not write Zig code ? I'm not really understanding your explanation for why we can write other languages with LLM but not Zig here.

> Rust trades the low-level clarity for compiler-enforced safety. If you're not a code artisan or don't care about being one, then please use Rust.

Not really seeing the connection here. What do you mean by code artisan? Are you trying to gatekeep Zig because you think Zig is too difficult for LLMs?

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rahen an hour ago | parent [-]

You asked if there was "tangible benefit to end user or developer using ai assisted development". My answer is no, it can be done but has no benefits for this use case. Use Rust here, because its compiler acts as an AI safety net.

Being a code artisan is not gatekeeping. It means if you're used to being close to the metal and sometimes know better than the compiler, Zig is for you. If you're not, use Rust.

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9dev 34 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

> if you […] often know better than the compiler

With all due respect, that tickles my spidey senses. People claiming to know better than a compiler about low-level details of their code are most often either engaging in premature hyper-optimisation, or suffer a specific kind of greybeard hubris IMHO

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applfanboysbgon 29 minutes ago | parent [-]

The idea that humans can't solve a specific problem more efficiently than a generalised algorithm that has to work for all code ever written in the language is a lie that JS script kiddies tell themselves to justify remaining ignorant without feeling bad about it.

	▲	9dev 15 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Oh, humans can definitely do that, in some capacity, if they're attentive, slept enough, aren't hungry, or in emotional distress, for a limited amount of time. A generalised algorithm can do this consistently, billions of times, which happens to be the amount of problems involved in building an application.

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zuzululu 22 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

> Being a code artisan is not gatekeeping. It means if you're used to being close to the metal and often know better than the compiler, Zig is for you. If you're not, use Rust.

You are saying that if you are not a code artisan (who by definition can't use LLM) likeyou then they should not use Zig. Honestly, I don't care. I'm not a code artisan, if Zig can help me ship faster and better with LLMs, my job is done and that's what I get paid for.

> Codex CLI taking over 15 minutes to recompile on my fairly high-end machine. Zig's incremental compilation optimizations are amazing, giving near-instant recompiles measured in ms instead of minutes.

So there is a benefit here mentioned by the non-arisans which is what I wanted to know but you wouldn't know if you don't use ai assisted delivery.

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eptcyka 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> You're the pilot, not the compiler.

This to me reads like an LLMism.

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hiccuphippo 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Zig lets you be very explicit about what you want. Zig's hello world takes 3 or 4 lines where other languages take 1. That is how much other languages make decisions for you. Some people care to make those decisions themselves.

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applfanboysbgon 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

This is the weirdest basis for comparing a language I've ever seen. Zig is one line as well, `std.debug.print("Hello, world!\n", .{});`, unless you're counting defining main and its brackets as 4 lines, in which case... Rust has that too, Java is 7 lines and C# is 8 lines to import System library and define the Program class as well if you're not using top-level statements / implicit usings.

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Edit for replies complaining I used debug.print:

Okay, `try std.io.getStdOut().writer().print("Hello, world!\n", .{});`. Still one line, more explicit with chained methods, but that still just goes to show you how arbitrary this metric is -- Zig's standard library makes you be more explicit with one function, but it doesn't make you be as explicit with another one that works essentially the same way but writes to a different stream, ergo this has nothing to do with the language's inherent explicitness but rather comparing the implementation of a single random function.

	▲	denismenace 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		As the name suggest `std.debug.print` is a short hand for debug printing. In a CLI app for example you should use IO.
	▲	solatic 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		std.debug.print is, as its name suggests, for debug output, not for program output. In Zig, you create a buffered writer for the stdout file handle, write hello world to the buffer, and then flush it. It exposes what's actually happening underneath.

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zuzululu an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

As does C++ and other languages. What is so special about Zig that you cannot use LLMs with it? Please provide examples.

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applfanboysbgon 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I often use LLMs to build and modify open-source tools for personal use and Rust's compile times are disgusting, eg. Codex CLI taking over 15 minutes to recompile on my fairly high-end machine. Zig's incremental compilation optimizations are amazing, giving near-instant recompiles measured in ms instead of minutes. I would certainly classify four orders of magnitude faster compilation as a tangible benefit even if you're not writing the code by hand.

	▲	zuzululu an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Rust is quite slow but that is an interesting benefit but still not sure what the trade offs are, Rust has a huge mature ecosystem and there are lot of jobs for it. Are you able to ship faster with Zig vs Rust? How did you arrive at the 4x figure? I'm really puzzled why people are so angry over using ai assistance with Zig. LLMs are always going to be able to write better code faster and better than anyone who calls themselves code artisans in this day and age. I think this comment posted a while back someone who worked on Zig is pretty telling: > The key problem with Zig nowadays is how much of its community and adoption is driven by anti-Rust sentiment. As a result, while Rust puts beginner onboarding and documentation at the center of its culture, as opposed to the “C neckbeard”'s culture, Zig is going the other way around. And ultimately this didn't stop people from using AI generating Zig code as much of the users in the thread are already using it to ship quality faster. Happy to use the work the community outputs and culture is largely irrelevant when prompting LLMs outputs code that doesn't really require any intimate knowledge with the syntaxes