A Zig-Zag Adventure
I’m a huge fan of C#. I’ve spent years mastering it, and honestly, quite good at it. And C# is better than ever: with every release, gets faster and more robust—at this point, rivaling C++ and Rust in many benchmarks with barely any difference. I still love it, and many of my projects are (and will continue to be) built with it. It’s my “home base.”
But lately, I felt like I needed a new challenge—something more “raw”. That’s when I started playing with Zig as a hobby/educational project. And well, things escalated.
Why Zig? (And why not Rust?)
I did try Rust, but honestly? It’s just not fun for me. It’s way too strict. Instead of focusing on the code logic or the “big picture”, I’d spend hours fighting the grammar and the borrow checker. And don’t even get me started on the syntax—it’s full of abbreviated commands and esoteric punctuation that makes my eyes hurt.
Zig, on the other hand, is simple, direct, and what you see is what you get. No hidden runtime, no heavy-handed rules. It respects your intelligence.
It’s Not All Sunshine and Rainbows
Let’s be real: moving to Zig has been a massive uphill battle in some ways. Coming from the luxury of C#, I really miss things like Attributes and Reflection. Yes, reflection is slower, but man, it is incredibly powerful for building tools. Zig’s comptime is amazing and covers a lot of ground, but it’s a different beast entirely.
Then there’s the ecosystem. Zig is still young, and the documentation is… let’s say “sparse.” Even LLMs, which are usually my go-to for quick answers, constantly struggle to give the right solutions because there just aren’t enough examples out there yet.
It’s ABI is not stable. Some things that would be trivial in C, are not possible in Zig.
And don’t get me started on the IDE support. I’ve moved most of my coding to the Zed editor lately. I love how fast it is, but it’s definitely not Rider. When you’re used to the deep, “knows-everything” intelligence of JetBrains tools for C#, coding in Zig feels a bit like flying a plane with half the instruments missing.
The Perfect Side Project
So why do it? Because it is an adventure. I feel exploring a brand new world, sharing my findings with the community, and pushing the boundaries. It is like planing a day-one-released game without any walkthrough - you’re just trying to figure things out on your own.
What started as a “let’s see how this works” weekend project has turned into something much bigger. It’s been an incredible learning experience that has forced me to sharpen my skills. And that hobby project? It actually turned into a full-blown engine. But I’ll save the details of that “accidental” release for the next post.
