[quotemstr]

Choosing something like Zig over C++ on simplicity grounds is going to be a false economy. C++ features exist for a reason. The complexity is in the domain. You can't make a project simpler by using a simplistic language: the complexity asserts itself somehow, somewhere, and if a language can't express the concept you want, you'll end up with circumlocution "patterns" instead.

Build system complexity disappears when you set it up too. Meson and such can be as terse as your Curl example.

I mean, it's your project, so whatever. Do what you want. But choosing Zig for the stated reasons is like choosing a car for the shape of the cupholders.

[Philpax]

Your Swiss Army Knife with a myriad of 97 oddly-shaped tools may be able to do any job anyone could ask of it, but my Swiss Army Knife of 10 well-designed tools that are optimal for my set of tasks will get my job done with much less frustration.

[meheleventyone]

> C++ features exist for a reason.

But sometimes not good ones. Lot's of domains make tradeoffs about what features of C++ to actually make use of. It's an old language with a lot of cruft being used across a wide set of problems that don't necessarily share engineering trade offs.

[hnlmorg]

That’s not fully true though. There’s different types of complexity:

- project requirements

- requirements forced upon you due to how the business is structured

- libraries available for a particular language ecosystem

- paradigms / abstractions that a language is optimised for

- team experiences

Your argument is more akin to saying “all general purpose languages are equal” which I’m sure you’d agree is false. And likewise, complexity can and will manifest itself differently depending on language, problems being solved, and developer preferences for different styles of software development.

So yes, C++ complexity exists for a reason (though I’d personally argue that “reason” was due to “design by committee”). But that doesn’t mean that reason is directly applicable to the problems the LightPanda team are concerned about solving.

[vegabook]

C++ features for complexity management are not ergonomic though, with multiple conflicting ideas from different eras competing with each other. Sometimes demolition and rebuild from foundations is paradoxically simpler.

[zipy124]

A lot of them only still exist for backwards compatabilities sake though. And a decent amount because adding something as a language extension rather than building the language around it has consequences.

[jandrewrogers]

C++ features exist for a reason but it may not be a reason that is applicable to their use case. For example, C++ has a lot of features/complexity that are there primarily to support low-level I/O intensive code even though almost no one writes I/O intensive code.

I don't see why C++ would be materially better than Zig for this particular use case.