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by AnIdiotOnTheNet 1999 days ago
From what you're saying, I believe you would complain about a foreign language simply because it doesn't resemble your native language enough. Zig's syntax choices are not arbitrary and great effort is made to ensure their consistency. Your complaints about the syntax aren't that there is anything inconsistent or illogical about the syntax, just that it isn't the syntax you're used to.

That's a valid reason to not want to use the language, but I don't believe it is a valid basis for criticism and certainly doesn't excuse the hostility of your comments in this thread.
1 comments
pfalcon 1999 days ago
> From what you're saying, I believe you would complain about a foreign language simply because it doesn't resemble your native language enough.

I assume you mean a natural language. No, I won't complain about a real language used by people. I might criticize someone's inventing their own natural language. The same as I do for programming languages. And I'm very well familiar with the "we need to invent to move forward" argument. I also assume that people taking that ungrateful task are aware that they will receive criticism for that.

> just that it isn't the syntax you're used to.

Not just me, but many people. I specifically started to comment, seeing other people's feedback resonates with my own sentiment about Zig.

> certainly doesn't excuse the hostility of your comments in this thread.

I don't think there was particular "hostility", but I indeed try to nail right at the spot of the issues. Ouch! Beyond that, I allowed me some sour comments regarding downvoting other peoples' and my comments where concerns were raised with way Zig does some things. Such downvoting could be considered hostility, but I actually consider it funny ;-).

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AnIdiotOnTheNet 1999 days ago
If you go into a conlang discussion and complain about people inventing languages when there's already natural languages, I guarantee you will get downvoted and pretty much for the same reason.

Let's look at some of your criticisms:

  > @call(.{ .modifier = .never_inline }, collectNoInline, .{gc});
> I'm sorry, but that's total nonsense. Shows that not enough good faith went into Zig design. Even in C, that could be syntactically annotated as:

  > /*pragma:noinline*/
  > collectNoInline(gc);
In which you say that a built-in function call with optional flags and settings is total nonsense, while hijacking comment syntax to change compiler behavior is better. You can make an argument for that, but the way you describe it as "total nonsense" and not in good faith is definitely hostile.

Let's look at some more examples:

> Jumping thru hoops is what Zig seems to choose with its unorthodox, different-just-to-be-different syntax.

> Zig appears to have strong NIH mentality in regard to the syntax. Trying to replace C, but go out of their way trying to invent syntax just to be different from it and most other things too.

Zig's syntax isn't that unorthodox except compared to languages that look even more like C than it does, and it definitely isn't different just to be different. By claiming such, when there are thousands of posts in discussions about syntax, is plain insulting. Can you provide even a single post that suggests anyone has ever suggested syntax be a certain way just to be different?

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