It's kinda fun to build with too. Making a bootloader, doing some UEFI things. Much easier (for me) than when trying with C. But also, new&shiny and learning is fun - increases my bias.
The thing about Zig in these times is that it proves that software development as a craft is not dead or replaced by LLMs.
Even though I use LLMs every day, and have to admit they're remarkably good at many classes of problem, I don't want a programming language built by an LLM. Every line of code in a programming language, every decision, every trade off, matters. A vibe-designed/vibe-coded programming language would be a disaster. I don't know how else to put it, and I've never seen any model produce code that would convince me otherwise (even Fable, which is, in fact, a notable improvement over the prior best models). The models don't want anything. They don't have meaningful opinions. They don't know what comfortable vs. uncomfortable feels like in a language (or in a GUI or CLI interface at sufficient levels of complexity).
You can't get a language like Zig out of an LLM without simply copying Zig, and even then it would be a copy that is worse. (I mean, I'm assuming "copy with an LLM" means, "have an LLM write the spec and another build the language to the spec", not literally `cp` the source tree.)
The only exception is C/C++, where there is none established that well, for good or bad.
These choices may create later super-convoluted processes when you have to mix more than one language together.
Packaging systems makes thing easy, but complicate further the line if another language needs to be used.
The only real such build systems are Buck and Bazel. But they have way too much baggage from their overlords.
It’s a shame.
Even though I use LLMs every day, and have to admit they're remarkably good at many classes of problem, I don't want a programming language built by an LLM. Every line of code in a programming language, every decision, every trade off, matters. A vibe-designed/vibe-coded programming language would be a disaster. I don't know how else to put it, and I've never seen any model produce code that would convince me otherwise (even Fable, which is, in fact, a notable improvement over the prior best models). The models don't want anything. They don't have meaningful opinions. They don't know what comfortable vs. uncomfortable feels like in a language (or in a GUI or CLI interface at sufficient levels of complexity).
You can't get a language like Zig out of an LLM without simply copying Zig, and even then it would be a copy that is worse. (I mean, I'm assuming "copy with an LLM" means, "have an LLM write the spec and another build the language to the spec", not literally `cp` the source tree.)