[scuff3d]

In general I agree with you, Zig is obviously trying to give as much control as possible and avoid higher level abstractions, but it's not like they haven't added elements to the language to improve ergonomics and make the right choice the easy choice.

For loops with a capture group. Under the hood Zig is doing bounds checking and binding the result of each iteration to the variable in the capture groups.You can add a range to that and Zig will iterate it for you. One could argue this is a "higher level" abstractation compared to a traditional for loop and accessing an array by index, but it exists because it naturally pushes developers to write more robust code.

The try keyword, being short hand for catch err return err. A Go developer might argue that it's better to be explicit and not have try. But it's a common pattern and it's far more ergonomic to use the try keyword then it is to catch and return every single time.

Shit, you could argue that the entire idea of comp time is an abstraction to allow code generation. Someone like Ginger Bill would argue you're better off writing a separate program to generate source code then use meta programming.

With the upcoming IO interface and the plans for async, it seems to me that interfaces are going to play a much more prominent role in the language. It makes sense they might want to consider abstractions that push developers towards good design when working with them.