Zig vs Rust. Which one is going to be future?

I think about pros and cons and what to choose for the second (modern) language in addition to C.

@programming@programming.dev

  • yoevli@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    In what ways do you feel Rust is too clunky and how do you think it could be improved? Not looking to argue or even disagree necessarily; I’m just curious where that perspective comes from.

    • dudinax@programming.dev
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      1 month ago

      Here’s some of my personal complaints. I don’t in general know how to fix them.

      1. proc_macros need their own crate

      2. generics cause problems. Many useful macros can’t handle them. Try using a generic that’s a complex async function, then pass a closure to it.

      3. There’s this kind of weird mismatch where sometimes you want an enum wrapping various types, and in others generics. I find my data flows switching back and forth.

      4. async in rust is actually really good, but go does it better. I don’t think rust could match go without becoming a different language.

      5. Traits are just a big mess. Trait implementations with generics have to be mutually exclusive, but there aren’t any good tools to make them so. The orphaned trait rule is necessary to keep the language sane but is incredibly restricting. Just today I find certain a attribute macros for impls that doesn’t work on trait impls. I guess I have to write wrappers for every trait method.

      6. The “new type” pattern. Ugh. Just make something like a type alias that creates a distinct type. This one’s probably easy to fix.

      7. Cargo is truly great, but it’s a mystery to me right now how I’m going to get it to work with certain packaging systems.

      To me, Rust is a bunch of great pieces that don’t fit together well.

      • lad@programming.dev
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        1 month ago

        Rust is a bunch of great pieces that don’t fit together well.

        That might change over time.