[yellowapple]

> Part of the appeal of C is that it's easy to integrate into other projects, regardless of the build system or obscure hardware it might be targeting.

Zig should be just as easy to integrate. Sure, it's one more thing to install, but it'll spit out .o files just like a C compiler would if you tell it to (which means you can shove it in your Makefile or what have you), and will spit out .h files for linking. You miss out on Zig's build system niceties that way, though (including the cross-compilation demonstrated in the article).

Regardless, being a "C replacement" kinda implies (if not outright explies) that it's replacing C; compiling to C kinda defeats that purpose. It'd still be useful, though, and is probably possible (might even be relatively trivial if LLVM and/or Clang provide some mechanism to generate C from LLVM IR or some other intermediate representation).