[int_19h]

Oh, you mean target architectures. But stuff like SuperH is used only for embedded these days, where even C is often rather idiosyncratic. For most coders, Zig is comparable to other mainstream languages in terms of supporting mainstream platforms.

Anyway, this is really a matter of implementation, not a language issue. There's nothing about Zig that makes it inherently impossible to support SH2 or any other platform - indeed, as others have noted, they already have a C backend in the works, so the endgame is to support everything that has a C compiler.

Also, as far as C interop goes, if I remember correctly, Nim can't just take a C header and expose everything declared in it - you still have to manually redeclare the functions and types that you want in Nim, no? You can use c2nim, of course, but that's not really any different than generators for other languages, and requires extra build steps etc. Zig handles it all transparently.

[Zababa]

> Anyway, this is really a matter of implementation, not a language issue.

I think separating the two is a bit artificial. Python being slow is partially an implementation issue but the fast implementations can't run everything. When you compare languages, you have to compare implementations, otherwise it's meaningless.

[int_19h]

You have to compare ecosystems, but when doing so, you still have to compare PL design and PL implementation separately, because they have different implications. A quality-of-implementation issue means that something can be done, but isn't done by this particular implementation. A language limitation applies to all implementations.

[Zababa]

That's not really true, you can go around language limitations. Go has codegen for generics, JavaScript has TS for static types, Babel for """macros""". Lots of propositions that are not in JS now can be used with Babel. Python has C extensions.

[int_19h]

TypeScript is a different language from JavaScript, and C is a different language from Python, so I don't think those are good examples. Similarly, various macro languages that sit on top of something else are also languages in their own right.

And sure, you can always "fix" a language by designing a derivative higher-level language that transpiles into the old one. In fact, this is a time-honored tradition - C++ was originally just such a transpiler (to C). But the very fact that you have to do this points at the original design deficiencies.

[kjeetgill]

> Anyway, this is really a matter of implementation, not a language issue.

That's kind of what people are getting at in this whole conversation though isn't it, ecosystems around languages matter. They can't be an afterthought.

[int_19h]

Of course - which is exactly why Zig is not ignoring this. But we still have to compare apples to apples, and oranges to oranges. My original comment was about languages - specifically the ability of the language to consume libraries from another language with minimal hassle, and the response was that Nim somehow does it better.

I'm not even sure why arch support was brought up in this thread, to be honest, because it's not relevant at all? If your problem is unsupported architecture, it's a blocker long before you need to use any libraries...