IME Zig's breaking changes are quite manageable for a lot of application types since most of the breakage these days happens in the stdlib and not in the language. And if you just want do read and write files, the highlevel file-io interfaces are nearly identical, they just moved to a different namespace and now require a std.Io pointer to be passed in.

And tbh, I take a 'living' language any day over a language that's ossified because of strict backward compatibility requirements. When updating a 3rd-party dependency to a new major version it's also expected that the code needs to be fixed (except in Zig those breaking changes are in the minor versions, but for 0.x that's also expected).

I actually hope that even after 1.x, Zig will have a strategy to keep the stdlib lean by aggressively removing deprecated interfaces (maybe via separate stdlib interface versions, e.g. `const std = @import("std/v1");`, those versions could be slim compatibility wrappers around a single core stdlib implementation.

I really love Zig the language, but I'm distancing myself from the stdlib. I dislike the breakage, but I also started questioning the quality of the code recently. I was working on an alternative I/O framework for Zig over the last months, and I was finding many problems that eventually led to me trying to not depend on stdlib at all. Even on the code announced here, the context switching assembly is wrong, it doesn't mark all necessary registers as clobbered. I mentioned this several times to the guys. The fact that it's still unchanged just shows me lack of testing.

To each his own, but while I can certainly understand the hesitancy of an architect to pick Zig for a project that is projected to hit 100k+ lines of code, I really think you're missing out. There is a business case to using Zig today.

True in general but in the cloud especially, saving server resources can make a significant impact on the bottom line. There are not nearly enough performance engineers who understand how to take inefficient systems and make improvements to move towards theoretical maximum efficiency. When the system is written in an inefficient language like Python or Node, fundamentally, you have no choice but to start to move the hotpath behind FFI and drop down to a systems language. At that point your choices are basically C, C++, Rust, or Zig. Of the four choices, Zig today is already simplest to learn, with fewer footguns, easier to work with, easier to read and write, and easier to test. And you're not going to write 100k LOC of optimized hotpath code. And when you understand the cost savings involved in reducing your compute needs by sometimes more than 90% by getting the hotpath optimized, you understand that there is very much indeed a business case to learning Zig today.

For what it's worth, Bun is written in Zig (https://bun.sh/). The language isn't exactly in an early stage.

we (ZML) have been back to following Zig master since std.Io was introduced. It's not that bad tbh. Also most changes really feel like actual improvements to the language on a day to day basis.

No shame in waiting for 1.0. Specially if you want to read docs rather than the code itself.

You're assuming that 1.0 will bring about stability. For all we know version 1.0 could make way for version 2.0 soon after.

Though perhaps the Zig developers have promised this will not happen.

I wouldn't have expected graphic sex slang to be acceptable as a NH user name.

This would translate as ~"eats pussy", where "broûter" is a verb reserved for animals feeding on grass, implying a hefty bush.

> but for the Grand Majority of the devs in here, it's like an announcement that it's raining in Kuldîga...

Lol, I’ll borrow this.

Please stop posting 0-information-content complaints.

I'm so sorry to hear about your diagnosis whatever it is :-P.

People might be triggered by the word "worthless" but I totally get your point.

I hear great things about the language but only have so many hours in the day and so many usable neurons to spend in that day. Someday it would be nice to play with it.

The easiest way to embrace any new language is to have a compelling use to use it. I've not hit that point yet.

I mean, you're right that still so many of us can't use the language yet, but I think we can still applaud progress towards major features when it's less than stable.

Kudos Zig contributors!

Pretty typical jaded HN comment there, chief. "This language's churn is more than I prefer -- why would anyone use it?" If you're not interested, just downvote and move on. Wondering out loud why anyone would actively use it ("for some reasons?") is a lame waste of bytes.

An AI will be able to handle updating your code for 95% of your breaking changes