[n42]

I’m starting a project that requires a lower level language. Ideally I have tighter control of memory and no GC. I want to move fast and be safe. Go gives me the speed of development I desire, but is a little higher level than this project calls for. Rust is in theory the right choice, but my development speed is like molasses. Given I hope for this project to turn into a company I seek VC backing for, I’m uncomfortable investing in a tool that slows me down so early on.

How has Zig been for you in this regard? Do you have any regrets building your company’s flagship software around it at this stage?

[LinuXY]

IMO Zig right now is fairly buggy. And the rate of bug introduction has been greater than the fixing of said bugs over the past few years. (Not a knock on the project.) Move fast and break things. Trying to develop production quality software in Zig is like trying to hit a moving target. Zig is not production ready, and they mean it. The ABI is not stable and features are removed/retooled from version to version. (eg. removal of async.) This is all stated upfront, however. Zig is a WIP. That being said, if you've read the warning labels and are still excited there's /tons/ of promise. They are on the right track to being a modern C replacement/augment/mux with an integrated build system. And it's a joy to program in. And the community is pretty great. The best way forward is joining the community and contributing in one way or another, because Zig will be quite special once it's done. Bun is a clear indication of this.

[jackosdev]

I'm also interested in this, the segmentation faults Primeagen found in Bun were concerning: https://youtu.be/qAYFepR4GcE?t=370 might have been fixed by now though.

I was seriously looking at Zig, but I'm always getting faster in Rust and it feels like the downsides of extra complexity is well worth the upsides for larger projects.