[eikenberry]

This looks like an example of a low level language vs a high level language (relatively speaking). The low level language makes a lot more of what is going on underneath explicit compared to the higher level language which abstracts that away for a common pattern. Presumably that explicitness allows for more control and/or flexibility. So apples to oranges?

[continuational]

I don't think so, where's the extra information in the Zig example?

In Rust, which is arguably also a low level language, it looks like this:

    enum Option<T> {
        None,
        Some(T),
    }

[foltik]

Low-level doesn’t mean more information, it means more explicit.

In Zig, that means being able to use the language itself to express type level computations. Instead of Rust’s an angle brackets and trait constraints and derive syntax. Or C++ templates.

Sure, it won’t beat a language with sugar for the exact thing you’re doing, but the whole point is that you’re a layer below the sugar and can do more.

Option<T> is trivial. But Tuple<N>? Parameterizing a struct by layout, AoS vs SoA? Compile time state machines? Parser generators? Serialization? These are likely where Zig would shine compared to the others.

[gf000]

I don't think there is a standardized meaning of 'low-level'. I think a useful definition is that a low-level language controls more/is explicit about more properties of execution.

So zig/c/c++/rust all have ways to specify when and where should allocations happen, as well as memory layout of objects.

Expressivity is a completely different axis on which these low-level languages separate. C has ultra-low expressivity, you can barely create any meaningful abstraction there. Zig is much better at the price of remarkably small amount of extra language complexity. And c++ and rust have a huge amount of extra language complexity for the high expressivity they provide (given that they have to be expressive even on the low-level details makes e.g. rust more complex as a language than a similar, GC-d language would be, but this is a necessity).

As for this particular case, I don't really see a level difference here, both languages can express the same memory layout here.

[foltik]

It’s one specific low-level abstraction, which is well defined: the primitive building blocks a higher level abstraction is built on and oblivious to.

Zig’s comptime is the primitive. Sum types, generics, etc. are things you can build on top.

The original example is the type-level equivalent of looking at:

  int foo() {
    return 4;
  }

and saying “why do I need all this function and return ceremony when I can just write the number 4 verbatim?”

[lmm]

> Option<T> is trivial. But Tuple<N>? Parameterizing a struct by layout, AoS vs SoA? Compile time state machines? Parser generators? Serialization? These are likely where Zig would shine compared to the others.

I don't see how any of that becomes easier in the Zig case. It's just extra syntactic ceremony. The Rust version conveys the exact same information.

[foltik]

It’s precisely not syntactic ceremony. It’s normal Zig running at compile time in which you can program types as values. In Rust (and most other languages) all you get is a highly abstract DSL:

Foo<T> where for<‘a> T: Bar<‘a, baz(): Send>

Information dense, but every new feature needs language design work. Zig lets you express arbitrary logic, loops, conditionals, etc. It’s lower level of abstraction than a type constraints DSL.

For example, adding “the method in this trait is Send” to Rust’s DSL took a whole RFC and new syntax. The Zig equivalent could be implemented with an if statement on a type at comptime.

Or how about the transformation of an async function into a state machine. Years of work, deep compiler integration, no way to write such transforms yourself. Same with generators, which still aren’t stable. I’d really like to be able to write these things like any other program.

If you don’t want or need to express things at this lower level of abstraction, fair, same reason most people stick to scripting languages and don’t think about memory layout. But “extra ceremony” is really underselling it.

[lmm]

> Foo<T> where for<‘a> T: Bar<‘a, baz(): Send>

But there's literally none of that in the example we're talking about. It's just an inert datatype declaration. And if anything the Zig version is more abstract - for the Rust version I have to understand <T>, whereas for the Zig version I have to understand comptime, Self, and @.