I did a bit of Zig exploration a few months ago, here's a few things that caught my attention:
- You don't have implicit allocations when using Zig stdlib. For example, when you instantiate an ArrayList or HashMap, you need to pass in an allocator, so you have full control over how memory is managed. So, even though you have higher level data structures, you still have a lot of low level control.
- Very good error handling. IMO better than Rust and Golang, while still being very explicit about what is happening
- "Uncolored" async functions, meaning there's no special syntax for declaring functions that can be paused/resumed. If I understood correctly (didn't try it a lot), you can turn any program into "async" by changing how I/O is handled globally. More details here: https://kristoff.it/blog/zig-colorblind-async-await/
- You don't have implicit allocations when using Zig stdlib. For example, when you instantiate an ArrayList or HashMap, you need to pass in an allocator, so you have full control over how memory is managed. So, even though you have higher level data structures, you still have a lot of low level control.
- Very good error handling. IMO better than Rust and Golang, while still being very explicit about what is happening
- "Uncolored" async functions, meaning there's no special syntax for declaring functions that can be paused/resumed. If I understood correctly (didn't try it a lot), you can turn any program into "async" by changing how I/O is handled globally. More details here: https://kristoff.it/blog/zig-colorblind-async-await/