Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by ksec 519 days ago
>I'm aborting. This is an unfortunate decision

LOL. At least that is 20 min of trying. ( From the first message to above )

2 comments

After some thought, I think I know why this is irritating. The domains I imagine Zig would be suited for are also ones where I use vector operations regularly. Almost a 1:1 overlap:

  - Embedded (Accelerations, velocities, positions)
  - Robotics
  - Games
  - Performance-critical scientific and numerical code (Cosmology, computational chemistry etc)
  - 3D graphics and visualizations
Zig has builtin support for vectors[1], which I think provides some alleviation. But sure, it's not as complete or flexible as a whole vector/matrix library.

[1]: https://ziglang.org/documentation/master/#Vectors

Great to know! From the description in that page and yours, it sounds like this is a related, but different concept. Specifically, that page includes use of a `Vec3` of the sort I was implementing, done with a `struct` and methods, vice @Vector.
Did you try this with Julia too? Their vector & matrix support is literally first class.
Hah yea. Julia's math syntax is the best I've seen, of any language. I wish rust and python etc had something similiar! Killer feature.
Was his research incorrect? How long should he continue to try to overcome what he believes to be a show-stopper constraint?

He has other choices after all. If this represents a negative that out-weighs the positives, so be it.

These same design decisions in Zig may make it a top tier option for other tasks. Just not this one.

Sorry I didn't mean to laugh at his effort. I was laughing more like I see this happening on HN in real time sort of mins after trying. I do think he has a point though. Not entirely sure how zig should tackle it or tackling it at all.