Zig Zen Update

This is a losing proposition. Because just like in Python, it may also generate endless debates on "ok, but what exactly is the idiomatic way for this particular thing here"? Is it A, or B, or maybe C? Since many are always possible, each optimizing for slightly different things, like simplicity, or maintainability, or performance, or readability, or coverage, etc. Groups may form furiously asserting that the idiomatic way must be C, others defending B, or A, and for what. Why does it matter? A young language free from cruft, after a long history of various decisions that led it on certain paths, can boldly claim such nonsense, but makes one wonder how it may look in 30 or 40 years, when other languages/ecosystems will point at its mistakes. Arguably Perl had it right all along, it's just a simple fact of life, expressed in such a generic manner that there is no need to fight it, since it's obviously true. Python's retort at the time was just clever marketing (aka lies), that worked (fooled a lot of people), it targeted Perl specifically just because that was the main competition back then.

I think people criticize that line in the zen of Python because Python has now become very maximalist. On it's own merits, I think "There should be one obvious way to do it" is much better, less clunky, than "There is an idiomatic way to do it".

Also, importantly, the Zen of Python is kinda written as a set of ideas that Python should aspire to ("there should be one obvious way to do it") instead of a sales pitch of Python's merits. I prefer that.

I always read this as a tongue in cheek joke b/c of how the — appears left aligned, then right aligned, then elsewhere in the Zen center aligned, sort of pointing to how yeah there’s multiple ways to do things …

The correct alternative is to make no motto at all. It's code. Makes computer go brrr.

It was already there though.

the green is from moving the line

Zig is in the space of languages where an abstraction that decides that memory allocations are irrecoverable is not good enough.

If you work in an environment where memory allocations can't fail or can't be handled if they fail, you might not want to use Zig, or C for that matter. Not every language should be designed to live in the space of "somehow low level but also a good choice for your basic web backend", like Rust.

Several things:

* There are many useful ways to handle it properly, and your choice depends on your program's constraints. The very small amount of friction (once you're used to it) encourages you to consider what ways to handle it are viable, such as allocating all memory at startup.

* If your strategy is to crash immediately, there is very little additional friction but you get the benefit of it being obvious in your code that this is the case.

* There are environments where memory allocation fails immediately, including if you turn off over-commit on Linux. If your hardware is dedicated to running a high reliability system, configuring it in this way is reasonable.

* Memory is not the only resource. Indeed, removing the special call out is what changed here. That different resources are handled with the same mechanism (errors, instead of eg returning null from malloc) is good.

You might have a limited budget per incoming request in a http server for example. Then you want all of the code that http handler calls to be able to handle an error of type something like OutOfMemory.

This is a very good ability to have in an application like a database.

Nearly impossible in some contexts, where the trade-off makes sense.

There are many scenarios, especially in embedded systems, where it can happen and you want to handle it robustly, e.g. by evicting a cache or flushing a buffer to disk.

the maintainers seem happy, especially now that CI is actually working how it's supposed to. but a non-rare complaint in the Zig discord is how slow Codeberg can be, and other things like the lack of codesearch hurt as well.

The link shows the exact diff

I recommend you to watch Andrew Kelly interview[0], while I'm not the target audience of Zig, I don't see him driving away any user. Also Jai as for now is a non existing language, just a selected few has access to it, but Jai approach is a kitchen sink, from what I saw it is all over the place in terms of features, now Zig vision feels cohesive.

[0] https://youtu.be/iqddnwKF8HQ

Activism as in their move away from GitHub? Andrew K recently said in the JetBrains interview that because of moving away, their CI/CD now actually works.

What activism is that?

Jai isn't even available publicly. The license isn't decided. Jonathan Blow doesn't want to deal with open source.

Comparing Jai and Zig on that behalf is crazy.

Edit: If that is about political activism it's even more crazy. A dude that rambles about woke stuff is political as well. Maybe just aligns with yours.

Excuse me, but I think zig grows ever better from driving away users who are driven away by flashy headlines and whatever is the opposite of this “activism” you suggest.

>when they drive away half of the prospective users with activism.

Like what? Plenty of people here follows Zig here and haven't seen any of it. And by any measure it is the least activism per language usage.

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