Zig is a modern C. Rust is a (modern) alternative to C++. So two different languages can exist alongside each other, just like C and C++.
Google has already started to use Rust in their android operating system. Linux started getting Rust stuff. Rust has the speed of C/C++ while having memory safety. Zig does not have the same memory safety as Rust, it's a mere C/C++ alternative. Does that answer your question?
Since you're asking today the answer is Rust because it is already more mature. In 5-10 years if you asked them the answer might be different if zig sticks around.
This is no shade against zig! It's just very new. It doesn't have a 1.0 release yet.
Also, they're very different languages with very different goals. They aren't necessarily competing in the same space.
Honestly C is the future. I don't know why people would move from C to any other language. It does the job well enough that there's no reason not to use it.
Think about it. Every modern application depends on a piece of code written in C, not Rust or Zig or any other language (except assembly). It can be used to solve any problem, and works in more places than any other language.
These arguments about "security" and "memory safety" are all pointless anyway in the face of modern code scanning tools. Cross-platform dev can be done trivially with preprocessors. If that's not enough, I don't know what to say. Get better at writing C obviously.
Lifetimes and UB should all be kept in mind at all times. You can explicitly mark lifetimes in your C code if you want using comments. Any index-out-of-bounds bugs, use-after-free, etc are just signs that your team needs more training and better code scanning utils. Write more tests!
Anything more complex than a simple typedef is just a sign that you're over-engineering your solution. #include is both simple, and does exactly what you'd expect any reasonable language to do - paste your referenced code inline. It's genius, and doesn't require any complicated explanations on namespaces and classes and subclasses and so on.
So which will be the future? C obviously.
/s
The number of people that genuinely believe this ( I saw the /s) .. Tells me that they haven't written any useful C or C++ code
... or worked in a large team with juniors and members coming and going over a long period of time.
Or worked on a similar team where the C & C++ was mostly written over a decade ago by dudes in another country who loved multi threading, and some of the “new” features were half-completed about 5 years ago, and nothing is documented, and oh yeah not a single person who did any of that still works at the company. Team is made of great people but all have been here for 0-3 years.
The idea of Rust being roughly as fast and low level as C++ but with improvements to memory safety and concurrency sounds heavenly. I know it’s in the back of most of our minds to look into it for the next big project.
I'm not going to say that C is unusable by any means (and I'm not saying you are saying that). It's a perfectly usable language. I do think that more people would benefit from exploring other options though. Programming languages are tools, not sports teams. People should familiarize themselves with many tools so they always have a good tool to use for any job.
I think a lot of people believe this because there is some truth to parts of it. I think we see languages like Rust and Zig (and others) popping up to try and solve specific problems better than others.
As for OP's post, there is no single "C successor" or anything like that. People will use the best tool they know of for the job whether that's C, Rust, C++, Zig, Python, C#, etc. Many languages will "replace" C in some projects, and at the same time, C will replace other languages in some projects (likely to a lesser extent though).
(Not /s this time)
Oh completely. C is here to stay, C has surpassed language and become protocol cause of libc being so centric to Unix like languages. But it needs to be done carefully and thoughtfully. The other languages are solving some of the pain points C has which I think a lot of people would be better off using than C.
Down that path C may become somewhat of an intermediate representation language for binary interfaces. No one would write it by hand, and maybe for the better
You got me in the first 3 quarters, not gonna lie!
Rust. It's a qualitative improvement over the old ways.
The future won't belong to Rust itself, but one of its descendants. Rust is too clunky to be the ultimate expression of its best ideas.
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.
Async is weird, and the generics salad stuff is clunky.
Just my gut feeling as well.
Here's some of my personal complaints. I don't in general know how to fix them.
proc_macros need their own crate
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.
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.
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.
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.
The "new type" pattern. Ugh. Just make something like a type alias that creates a distinct type. This one's probably easy to fix.
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.
- 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.
Yeah, Cargo itself doesn't deal with any of the bundling after the executable is built.
For that stuff, the efforts are certainly still ongoing. There's no grand unified tool yet.
If you just want e.g. a DEB file, then you probably want this: https://crates.io/crates/cargo-deb
But if you want to do more in CI, then there's kind of three popular options that I'm aware of.
just: More or less a shell script runner, and kind of like make.cargo-make: A lot of effort has been put into this, it's certainly got a good amount of features, but personally not a fan, since it makes you write a custom TOML format and then ideally you should be writing a custom script language, DuckScript. You can also use Rust scripts with it, which we tried, but there was just no way of passing parameters between tasks.cargo-xtask: This is not a tool, it's a pattern, basically just build your own build tool. It does have its downfalls, you're not going to build good caching into your own build tool, for example. But in principle I find this quite workable, as you get to write your CI code in Rust. There's also more and more community-made libraries to aid with that.Thanks, I've save your comment. I haven't heard of any of these.
Great suggestions! One nitpick:
But in principle I find this quite workable, as you get to write your CI code in Rust.
Having used xtask in the past, I’d say this is a downside. CI code is tedious enough to debug as it is, and slowing down the cycle by adding Rust compilation into the mix was a horrible experience. To add, CI is a unique environment where Rust’s focus on correctness isn’t very valuable, since it’s an isolated, project-specific environment anyway.
I’d rather use Deno or indeed just for that.
Rust is a bunch of great pieces that don't fit together well.
That might change over time.
Is zig memory safe by design? If not, rust will "win". Large companies aren't going to hire for an unknown or unpopular memory unsafe language when they already have C or C++ - there's just no contest.
Last I read, zig didn't even have a standard string library. Unless that changes, it won't even be a viable alternative to C/C++.
Edit: I checked and got this
the Zig language, like C, entrusts memory management to humans, placing full trust in human development. Zig then provides some memory safety checks to ensure memory safety. However, it still lacks the strict compile-time guarantees of Rust’s ownership system and borrow checker. Therefore, when writing Zig code, developers need to pay more attention to potential memory safety issues and ensure that errors and exceptional situations are handled correctly.
Unless Zig starts its own cult, I feel Rust will win in the end.
The thing with rust is that it is awesome. It does exactly what it promises and everyone keeps going on about.
If you want to talk cult talk to c developers. They are so indoctrinated. They say things like "undefined behaviour is fine you just have to code around it" "it's great there's almost no surface area to the standard lib as you can now trust your fellow developers to perfectly write all constructs" "yeah it causes uncountable security vulnerabilities (even when written by it's foremost experts) but that's unskilled developers and not a language problem"
It's too early to tell.
Rust has a killer feature and a tonne of buzz, but poor ergonomics.
Zig is developing into simple elegance and wonderful interop, but has more work to do before it will be widely usable.
It's entirely possible that ideas and lessons taken from them will inspire another language that ends up eclipsing them both.
I would say at this point in time it’s clearly decided that Rust will be part of the future. Maybe there’s a meaningful place for Zig too, but that’s the only part that’s too early to tell.
If you think Zig still has a chance at overtaking Rust though, that’s very much wishful thinking. Zig isn’t memory safe, so any areas where security is paramount are out of reach for it. The industry isn’t going back in that direction.
I actually think Zig might still have a chance in game development, and maybe in specialized areas where Rust’s borrow checker cannot really help anyway, such as JIT compilers.
Isn't exactly this kind of thing what is mostly responsible for the demise of Perl?
As I heard it told, the developers of Perl worked so long & hard on the next version after Perl 5, but then veered off to make a new language (Raku) and despite the reality being otherwise, people feared so much that Perl would die (i.e. that 6 would never materialize) that in the meantime "everyone" had switched to Python (despite it clearly being an inferior language - hehehehe:-P).
So that would be a "con" I suppose, if fights over which language is better ends up diluting efforts to work on or with either.
Isn’t exactly this kind of thing what is mostly responsible for the demise of Perl?
Perl died because better tools became available.
Who wants oxidised Metal when you can take off every Zig! You know what you doing!? Move Zig. For great justice.
Why not both?
I hope that someone in the 40 comments i don't have time to read right now has pointed out that the premise of OP is flawed for the simple reason that Rust hit v1.0 in 2015, while Zig is still nowhere near that milestone in 2024.
So we are not even talking about the same "future" period from the start.
So, no need to get to the second false premise in OP, which is limiting a "future" period to one successful dominating language only. Nor is there a need to go beyond these premises and discuss actual language details/features.
I also hope that some of the people reading this realize that OP is also the person posting all of the "stop trying to suppress C" posts.
🤣
I don't know, and I don't want to get personal. But that's usually a sign of someone who doesn't even code (at non-trivial levels at least)*, and thinks programming languages are like sport clubs, developers are like players contracted to play for one and only one club, and every person in the internet gantry need to, for some reason, pick one club (and one club only) to be a fanboy of. Some people even center their whole personality around such fanboyism, and maybe even venture into fanaticism.
So each X vs Y language discussion in the mind of such a person is a pre-game or a pre-season discussion, where the game or season is an imaginary competition such people fully concoct in their minds, a competition that X or Y will eventually and decidedly "win".
* Maybe that was an exaggeration on my part. Some junior developers probably fall into these traps too, although one might expect, or maybe hope, that their view wouldn't be that detached from reality.
I'm hoping to finally finish and send out a delayed new release for one of my older and mature CLI tools this weekend. It's written in C btw 😄
Modev says they've been using C for 25 years, and used Rust for several years as well! Their whole schtick baffles me.
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