🦀 Why Zig Feels More Practical Than Rust for Real-World CLI Tools / Dayvi Schuster

｢ the borrow checker can only catch issues at comptime but it will not fix the underlying issue that is developers misunderstanding memory lifetimes or overcomplicated ownership. The compiler can only enforce the rules you’re trying to follow; it can’t teach you good patterns, and it won’t save you from bad design choices ｣

https://dayvster.com/blog/why-zig-feels-more-practical-than-rust-for-real-world-cli-tools/

#zig #rust #programming

🦀 Why Zig Feels More Practical Than Rust for Real-World CLI Tools / Dayvi Schuster

｢ the borrow checker can only catch issues at comptime but it will not fix the underlying issue that is developers misunderstanding memory lifetimes or overcomplicated ownership. The compiler can only enforce the rules you’re trying to follow; it can’t teach you good patterns, and it won’t save you from bad design choices ｣

https://dayvster.com/blog/why-zig-feels-more-practical-than-rust-for-real-world-cli-tools/

#zig #rust #programming

After almost a week of refactoring and experimenting with several different approaches, I've updated my Zig nD SIMD vector library to be compatible with the latest Zig 0.15.1, and at the same time cleaned up some internals.

The solution I settled on is a mix of techniques proposed by others, and was needed due to the removal of the struct/namespace-merging syntax in the new Zig version, which this library heavily relies on. I don't like that the new source code is now more than 2x larger and involves a huge amount of duplication to address the many special cases of supported operations for different vector sizes and types. I might still take another pass to eliminate those (by using @compileError() for unsupported cases), but that'd be an implementation detail downstream users don't have to care about. I tried AOT code generation as well, but the special case handling made this feel less maintainable...

UPDATE: The only breaking change is the handling of vector swizzles. I had to remove the hundreds of named swizzle functions and replaced them with a single (comptime optimized) .swizzle(vec, pattern), e.g. .swizzle(vec, "xxyy")...

If you're interested, the new code is here:
https://github.com/thi-ng/zig-thing/blob/main/src/vectors.zig

The readme contains details about the many supported operations:
https://github.com/thi-ng/zig-thing/blob/main/doc/vectors.md

Installation instructions in the main repo readme:
https://github.com/thi-ng/zig-thing/tree/main

#Zig#Ziglang#ZigThing#Vectors#Refactoring

After almost a week of refactoring and experimenting with several different approaches, I've updated my Zig nD SIMD vector library to be compatible with the latest Zig 0.15.1, and at the same time cleaned up some internals.

The solution I settled on is a mix of techniques proposed by others, and was needed due to the removal of the struct/namespace-merging syntax in the new Zig version, which this library heavily relies on. I don't like that the new source code is now more than 2x larger and involves a huge amount of duplication to address the many special cases of supported operations for different vector sizes and types. I might still take another pass to eliminate those (by using @compileError() for unsupported cases), but that'd be an implementation detail downstream users don't have to care about. I tried AOT code generation as well, but the special case handling made this feel less maintainable...

UPDATE: The only breaking change is the handling of vector swizzles. I had to remove the hundreds of named swizzle functions and replaced them with a single (comptime optimized) .swizzle(vec, pattern), e.g. .swizzle(vec, "xxyy")...

If you're interested, the new code is here:
https://github.com/thi-ng/zig-thing/blob/main/src/vectors.zig

The readme contains details about the many supported operations:
https://github.com/thi-ng/zig-thing/blob/main/doc/vectors.md

Installation instructions in the main repo readme:
https://github.com/thi-ng/zig-thing/tree/main

#Zig#Ziglang#ZigThing#Vectors#Refactoring

This is not helping me in the market but what I love doing the most is computer language engineering. I'm learning how to write an #LSP right now to support my born language in neovim. I also discovered #LLVM recently. It lets you compile to any target from a generic ASM. It made me realize something. The first languages where all compiled. Then, we got the interpreted languages. But recently, the new languages are all compiled again! Think of #rust, #go, #zig, #elixir. I wonder if it's because we perfected the tooling in a way that maintaining a compiled language is not that hard anymore. Go is a weird one. It has a garbage collector. Yeah! A compiled language with a garbage collector. It means that there is a process that is embedded in the executable to just do garbage collection. We might now have a real reason anymore to interpret.

Yesterday I released new versions of https://thi.ng/wasm-api (and its add-on packages), a modular and extensible bridge API & toolchain for hybrid JS/TS/Zig/WebAssembly apps, now updated to be compatible with the latest Zig version 0.15.1...

The update addresses some of Zig's breaking syntax & build system changes only, nothing on the JS/TS side has changed. As a result https://thi.ng/wasm-api-dom has a slightly revised internal structure (also a breaking change, but nothing major & unavoidable). All bundled Zig examples[1] in the repo have been updated too, take a look for reference (if needed).

FYI More details about the Zig language changes here:
https://ziglang.org/download/0.15.1/release-notes.html#Language-Changes

Specifically, the removal of usingnamespace has had a major impact on the existing handling of generated types in these wasm-api support packages (or your own) and now forces an additional level of hierarchy in terms of namespacing. This is because usingnamespace enabled a form of namespace merging, which allowed the generated WASM⭤TS interop types (written to their own sourcefile) to be merged/hoisted into the main library module.

For example, previously after importing const dom = @import("wasm-api-dom"); we could refer to a type via dom.WindowInfo. Now with namespace merging removed, we have to use dom.types.WindowInfo. As I said, it's not a major departure, but a breaking change nonetheless[2]...

The build.zig file bundled with https://thi.ng/wasm-api is now also only compatible with Zig 0.15.1 (for now). Build files for older Zig versions are still included too (in the same directory)[3].

Lastly, once more for the record: The wasm-api bridge itself is NOT tied to Zig (or a particular version), however it's the main use case/language for my own WebAssembly use cases...

[1] https://github.com/thi-ng/umbrella/tree/develop/examples (all examples starting with zig-*)

[2] The existing design of these modules helped to keep these breaking changes to a minimum in userland code and these updates are all following the same uniform pattern (i.e. exposing interop types via modulename.types.TypeName...)

[3] https://github.com/thi-ng/umbrella/tree/develop/packages/wasm-api#using-the-zig-build-system

#ThingUmbrella#Zig#Ziglang#WebAssembly#WASM#TypeScript#JavaScript#Interop

Yesterday I released new versions of https://thi.ng/wasm-api (and its add-on packages), a modular and extensible bridge API & toolchain for hybrid JS/TS/Zig/WebAssembly apps, now updated to be compatible with the latest Zig version 0.15.1...

The update addresses some of Zig's breaking syntax & build system changes only, nothing on the JS/TS side has changed. As a result https://thi.ng/wasm-api-dom has a slightly revised internal structure (also a breaking change, but nothing major & unavoidable). All bundled Zig examples[1] in the repo have been updated too, take a look for reference (if needed).

FYI More details about the Zig language changes here:
https://ziglang.org/download/0.15.1/release-notes.html#Language-Changes

Specifically, the removal of usingnamespace has had a major impact on the existing handling of generated types in these wasm-api support packages (or your own) and now forces an additional level of hierarchy in terms of namespacing. This is because usingnamespace enabled a form of namespace merging, which allowed the generated WASM⭤TS interop types (written to their own sourcefile) to be merged/hoisted into the main library module.

For example, previously after importing const dom = @import("wasm-api-dom"); we could refer to a type via dom.WindowInfo. Now with namespace merging removed, we have to use dom.types.WindowInfo. As I said, it's not a major departure, but a breaking change nonetheless[2]...

The build.zig file bundled with https://thi.ng/wasm-api is now also only compatible with Zig 0.15.1 (for now). Build files for older Zig versions are still included too (in the same directory)[3].

Lastly, once more for the record: The wasm-api bridge itself is NOT tied to Zig (or a particular version), however it's the main use case/language for my own WebAssembly use cases...

[1] https://github.com/thi-ng/umbrella/tree/develop/examples (all examples starting with zig-*)

[2] The existing design of these modules helped to keep these breaking changes to a minimum in userland code and these updates are all following the same uniform pattern (i.e. exposing interop types via modulename.types.TypeName...)

[3] https://github.com/thi-ng/umbrella/tree/develop/packages/wasm-api#using-the-zig-build-system

#ThingUmbrella#Zig#Ziglang#WebAssembly#WASM#TypeScript#JavaScript#Interop

Owi

https://github.com/OCamlPro/owi

Symbolic execution for #Wasm, #C, C++, #Rust and #Zig

"#Owi is an open-source framework for advanced #WebAssembly analysis and manipulation, with a focus on practical symbolic execution and robust tooling. It is designed for researchers, engineers, programming language enthusiasts and practitioners requiring precise, flexible, and extensible support program reasoning."

#FormalVerification#SoftwareTesting#Testing#SoftwareEngineering #RustLang#ZigLang

Owi

https://github.com/OCamlPro/owi

Symbolic execution for #Wasm, #C, C++, #Rust and #Zig

"#Owi is an open-source framework for advanced #WebAssembly analysis and manipulation, with a focus on practical symbolic execution and robust tooling. It is designed for researchers, engineers, programming language enthusiasts and practitioners requiring precise, flexible, and extensible support program reasoning."

#FormalVerification#SoftwareTesting#Testing#SoftwareEngineering #RustLang#ZigLang