Zig by Example

186 points90 comments5 hours ago
yrds96

This is outdated and AI generated.

If you want a good source of zig learning material interactive and by examples please check out ziglings: https://codeberg.org/ziglings

It's writen and tested by humans, which is essential for learning purposes. It's listed in the official zig website, by the way.

This project is always up to date to the latest zig release.

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code-blooded

I just looked this up yesterday so sharing some more up-to-date resources for those interested in Zig:

- Learning Zig by Karl Seguin: https://www.openmymind.net/learning_zig/

- https://zig.guide/

- Free project-based online book Introduction to Zig by Pedro Park: https://pedropark99.github.io/zig-book.

- Ziglings, almost working programs you need to fix: https://codeberg.org/ziglings/exercises

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shaftoe444

  Examples target Zig 0.14.
Been some significant changes since then, not least to printing and formatting (see writergate).
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jdw64

Is Zig just a trend, or will it become a solidly established language? After all, learning something is an investment of time. With Zig, it doesn't seem to have the same kind of industry pressure as Rust. There's talk in open source circles about AI-related issues, and on Hacker News people say good things about Zig. The allocator concept looks great. But there's also a possibility that it won't become mainstream, like the D language. I personally like D and think its compiler is beautiful, but being linguistically good is different from being industrially adopted. So should I learn Zig, or wait a bit longer?

For now, I have a basic grasp of C#, a little Python, a little C++, and a little TypeScript. I also know Java to some extent, but honestly, what I mostly build is CRUD app assembly. To go deeper, I think I need to dig into a systems language. But I'm not sure whether to invest in Zig or Rust.

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b33j0r

Do not use this, I recommend ziglings if anything besides what Loris would say: you have to read code.

The builtins don’t even compile in these examples. This is 2 years out of date at least.

pezgrande

I like Zig but stopped learning it when I realized that all project based on it requires a specific version of the compiler to build.

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tapirl

Having quick viewed all the chapters, the examples are too simplistic to fully demonstrate Zig's syntax and semantics.

fallingmeat

for those new, start with why: https://ziglang.org/learn/why_zig_rust_d_cpp

synergy20

does zig still matter in the AI era? i was learning zig on and off and now have no motivation to learn it anymore.

stephc_int13

Encapsulating arguments inside .{} seems superfluous and noisy.

I'm sure this can be rationalized in some way, to either simplify parsing or solve some rare ambiguity, but I just don't see it.

I know this is a minor thing and can be considered as nitpicky, and I expect some friction with syntax when learning a new language, but I just can't stand things I see as gratuitous. Same with the forced use of _ = foo(.{}); to avoid compiling errors...

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mustaphah

You would probably be better off reading learnxinyminutes.com/zig/

atique29

My gut feelings had me check the Zig version. "Examples target Zig 0.14." Ah there we go

noelwelsh

Very brief. I'm not sure what this adds over reading the language documentation (which itself is not great). As it's entirely organized by language features it doesn't really talk about any larger scale design decisions, which is where I think language proficiency is really found.

fallingmeat

lots of people into zig this morning apparently!

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aselimov3

Is this much different than ziglings?

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baalimago

I'm missing the concurrency model.

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porteghal

just read it fast and easy! for a starter like me? amazing!

Thanemate

3 commits? Really? Why don't I just ask Claude or chatGPT instead?

miroljub

Looking for a resource (MCP, CLI, Skill, ...) that would improve Zig support in LLMs.

Currently, doing something with Zig as a target language would spend many more tokens and produce subpar results.

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