Programming

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

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.

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?

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++.

Unless Zig starts its own cult, I feel Rust will win in the end.

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.

Rust Magazine

Anti Commercial-AI license

Which one's in the Linux kernel?

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.

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.

Who wants oxidised Metal when you can take off every Zig! You know what you doing!? Move Zig. For great justice.

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.

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.

What are your goals?

If you want to learn another language just for the fun of it (the best reason) than learn both.

Of you want to improve your tool set to be able to land a job, then there is no good answer. Probably some other high level language like Python, Java, JavaScript, C#. Etc.

Also: Zig bay be easier to get started when coming from C, because it is mostly imperative.

Rust introduces concepts from functional programming. This could be interesting for you, of you don't have any experience in functional programming to get in touch with other programming styles. Or not, of you explicitly don't want to learn such things.

I use both languages, and I enjoy both. Shameless plug: I've written a blog post ~ 2 years ago what I like about each language: https://zigurust.gitlab.io/blog/posts/three-things/