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.

As the name suggest `std.debug.print` is a short hand for debug printing. In a CLI app for example you should use IO.

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.