[sryie]

If zig catches on then the question may change from "why zig" to "do I really need rust?". Rust has a higher entry barrier and is harder to use daily. Is the safety guarantee worth it? In my experience, it is easier to fix a bug than to prove to the rust compiler that there is no bug. I just need a language that finds and reports the bugs (before production). Zig's error handling is interesting in this regard and it may be "good enough". Beyond that, I would prefer to spend my time on the real problem rather than appeasing the compiler.

[noodledoodletwo]

It's really not that hard to use once you invest some time into it. I know where you are coming from, but appeasing the compiler actually means "I am writing safe code". Rather then "it compiled let's see what happens in production"

[sryie]

"some time" is the entry barrier I was referring to and increases the cost of onboarding and adoption. However, rust also incurs a non-negligible ongoing productivity cost for its complexity.

Rust can provide some guarantees but it still won't protect you from logic errors or a "clever" coworker. In comparison, zig is simple and at the end of the day readability is my best defense against bugs/errors.

There was an interesting comparison (and discussion) of zig vs rust safety a few months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26537693

I find myself agreeing with pron and others in that discussion when they say no one really wants to use a safe language. What they want are correct programs.

What remains to be seen is how easy it is to write correct programs in each and the values people place on the deltas between the two languages.

[mcronce]

> rust also incurs a non-negligible ongoing productivity cost for its complexity

This isn't really consistent with my experience. Compared to writing other languages with varying levels of strictness (C, Python, Go to name a few), Rust's compiler saves me a lot of time writing tests and finding bugs.

It doesn't save me the work of fixing them, but in my experience, bugs that are hard to find and easy to fix drastically outnumber bugs that are easy to find and hard to fix.

That said, I haven't tried Zig. It's on my radar, but just haven't had a new project to start lately.

[sryie]

I am surprised that you don't encounter a productivity cost in rust vs languages with a gc (like python and go). If that were typical then I assume everyone would be using it. What do you consider to be the tradeoffs between rust and other languages? What are its drawbacks in your experience? How much rust experience do you have compared to other languages?

[noodledoodletwo]

The productivity cost is mostly up front, once you understand borrowing it's seriously not bad in 99% of cases. Also, you can be initially productive in C or C++, but how much time goes into trying to fix undefined behavior, threading issues,etc. More importantly, when do those hours get spent? Is it after a customer is screaming into your support chatbot, or is it before you launch during normal development? To me that's the difference and the killer feature. That's why ms, aws, etc are using it. Not because it's new and marginally/debatably better then c/c++.

Once I started realizing what the borrow checker was saying it wasn't "fighting the compiler" I realized what I was asking the compiler to do was really not a good idea. It becomes your friend basically.

I didn't make this post to shill rust, I'm pretty language agnostic to my own detriment... The point is, it's worth considering and trying it again if you didn't get it the first time around. Rust took me 2x to become a tool I'd use, I honestly hated it at first.

[sryie]

I think we can agree that c and c++ are essentially table stakes at this point and that anything new needs to offer strong incentives.

I like rust (I actually liked it from the start years ago). However, I believe that there are tradeoffs and the companies you named use other languages in addition to rust because they also believe there are tradeoffs.

Rust won't be the last language. I don't want to get too comfortable with what I know and miss out on what I don't. I am excited by new languages that may also have something to offer. However, I can't master them all so a good discussion is valuable and can offer shortcuts through the noise. I think my assumption in my first reply to your original post was that you were interested in the same thing. However, if you are happy with rust then I don't want to spoil your enjoyment.

[throwawaymaths]

I think a static borrow checker tool is very likely going to be in the future of zig ecosystem (unlikely to be in the mainline, but that's okay), especially after the intermediate representations stabilize.

[noodledoodletwo]

I'll believe it when I see it hit 1.0 and has a healthy user base.