Two different philosophical approaches with Zig and Rust.
- Zig: Let's have a simple language with as few footguns as possible and make good code easy to write. However we value explicitness and allow the developer to do anything they need to do. C interoperability is a primary feature that is always available. We have run time checks for as many areas of undetermined behaviour as we can.
- Rust: let's make the compiler the guardian of what is safe to do. Unless the developer hits the escape hatch, we will disallow behaviour to keep the developer safe. To allow the compiler to reason about safety we will have an intricate type system which will contain concepts like lifetimes and data mobility. This will get complex sometimes so we will have a macro system to hide that complexity.
Zig is a lot simpler than Rust, but I think it asks more of it's developer.
don't know if it's still on the table, but Andrew has hinted that the unused variables error may in the future still produce an executable artefact but return an nonzero return code for the compiler. And truly fatal errors would STILL produce an executable artefact too, just one that prints "sorry this compilation had a fatal error" to stdout.
If I comment out sections of code while debugging or iterating I don't want a compile error for some unused variable or argument. Warning. fine, but this happens to me so frequently that the idea of unused variables being an error is insane to me.
It is insane and you are completely right. This has been a part of programming for over 50 years. Unfortunately you aren't going to get anywhere with zig zealots, they just get mad when confronted with things like this that have no justification, but they don't want to admit it's a mistake.
i think the plan is to make no distinction between error and warning, but have trivial errors still build. that said i wouldn't be surprised if they push that to the end because it seems like a great ultrafilter for keeping annoying people out so they don't try to influence the language.
They also made a carriage return crash the compiler so it wouldn't work with any default text files on windows, then they blamed the users for using windows (and their windows version of the compiler!).
It's not exactly logic land, there is a lot of dogma and ideology instead of pragmatism.
Some people would even reply how they were glad it made life difficult for windows users. I don't think they had an answer for why there was a windows version in the first place.
I'm not sure why you shouldn't make your compiler accept CRs (weird design decision), but fixing it on the user-side isn't exactly hard either. I don't know an editor that doesn't have an option for using LF vs CRLF.
The unused variable warning is legitimately really annoying though and has me inserting `_ = x;` all over the place and then forgetting to delete it, which is imo way worse than just... having it be a warning.
I don't know an editor that doesn't have an option for using LF vs CRLF.
And I don't know any other languages that don't parse a carriage return.
The point is that it was intentionally done to antagonize windows even though they put out a windows version. Some people defend this by saying that it's easy to turn off, some people defend it by saying windows users should be antagonized.
No zig people ever said this was a mistake, it was all intentional.
I'm never going to put up with behavior like that with the people making tools actively working against me.
defer is still something you have to consciously put in every time so it destroys the value semantics that C++ has, which is the important part. You don't have to "just write defer after a string", you can just use a string.
The 'not a problem for me' is what people would say about manual memory in C too. Defer is better but it isn't as good as what is already in use.
That's disingenous, Rust tries to minimize errors, first at compile time then at runtime, even if it at some discomfort of to programer.
Zig goes for simplicity while removing a few footguns. It's more oriented towards programmer enjoyment. Keep in mind that programmers don't distinguish ease of writing code from ease of writing unforeseen errors.
- Zig: Let's have a simple language with as few footguns as possible and make good code easy to write. However we value explicitness and allow the developer to do anything they need to do. C interoperability is a primary feature that is always available. We have run time checks for as many areas of undetermined behaviour as we can.
- Rust: let's make the compiler the guardian of what is safe to do. Unless the developer hits the escape hatch, we will disallow behaviour to keep the developer safe. To allow the compiler to reason about safety we will have an intricate type system which will contain concepts like lifetimes and data mobility. This will get complex sometimes so we will have a macro system to hide that complexity.
Zig is a lot simpler than Rust, but I think it asks more of it's developer.