On Saturday, 29 October 2022 at 11:22:20 UTC, Guillaume Piolat wrote:
>You would go ASICs.
But it's impractical so you could go FPGA.
But it's impractical so you could go GPGPU.
But it's impractical so you decide to go native.
I think this pattern is close the culture of C/C++, in the sense that many like to get a clear view of how their code is related to machine code instructions and memory layout. C/C++ is as close they feel they can get to machine code without taking the costs of dropping down to that level.
Rust and D have some of these, but also a large segment of users that are attracted to primarily high level programming. To a large extent I think this is a result of how these languages present them to newbies. If you present a high level layer to newbies you will grow a different user-base profile/culture. I am not sure if this is a good move as it is difficult to collect feedback that gives a clear focus on where to improve if the interests are diverse.
Maybe Zig is doing better than some competitors because it does not try to provide a high level experience (or do they?). Anyway, from a distance it looks like Zig is attracting a more more cohesive group of programmers with more overlapping expectations.