Zig Zen Update

6/6/2026 at 9:32:08 AM

Nicely done!

I always felt that Python's "There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it." was a bit of a mess.

Obviously (to anyone who was around at the time), that plank was written in response to Perl's motto: "There is more than one way to do it."

Zig's original take on this, "Only one obvious way to do things" seems even worse. You see, both languages agree that Perl had it wrong: it is unhelpful to have several different ways to write any future. But they went a little too far: it is not actually bad for it to be possible to write the same thing in more than one way.

Zig's new phrasing: "There is an idiomatic way to do it." captures the CORRECT alternative to Perl's motto. It is not important that there be no alternative ways of writing something, Rather, it is important that there be a single idiomatic way to write it.

by mcherm

6/6/2026 at 11:28:37 AM

This is a losing proposition. Because just like in Python, it may also generate endless debates on "ok, but what exactly is the idiomatic way for this particular thing here"? Is it A, or B, or maybe C? Since many are always possible, each optimizing for slightly different things, like simplicity, or maintainability, or performance, or readability, or coverage, etc. Groups may form furiously asserting that the idiomatic way must be C, others defending B, or A, and for what. Why does it matter? A young language free from cruft, after a long history of various decisions that led it on certain paths, can boldly claim such nonsense, but makes one wonder how it may look in 30 or 40 years, when other languages/ecosystems will point at its mistakes. Arguably Perl had it right all along, it's just a simple fact of life, expressed in such a generic manner that there is no need to fight it, since it's obviously true. Python's retort at the time was just clever marketing (aka lies), that worked (fooled a lot of people), it targeted Perl specifically just because that was the main competition back then.

by brakl

6/6/2026 at 12:40:27 PM

Because something bad might happen in 30 years is not the reason to make sure it happens in three...

by TylerE

6/6/2026 at 12:32:40 PM

Are you a Perl dev?

by Chris2048

6/6/2026 at 9:48:40 AM

I think people criticize that line in the zen of Python because Python has now become very maximalist. On it's own merits, I think "There should be one obvious way to do it" is much better, less clunky, than "There is an idiomatic way to do it".

Also, importantly, the Zen of Python is kinda written as a set of ideas that Python should aspire to ("there should be one obvious way to do it") instead of a sales pitch of Python's merits. I prefer that.

by Fraterkes

6/6/2026 at 4:04:45 PM

It all sounds great until someone writes nested list comprehensions. They are the recommended, idiomatic way to things most sane people would use ‘map’, ‘filter’, and ‘reduce’ chains, although chains are another thing python very much dislikes.

by iroddis

6/6/2026 at 5:06:54 PM

I always read this as a tongue in cheek joke b/c of how the — appears left aligned, then right aligned, then elsewhere in the Zen center aligned, sort of pointing to how yeah there’s multiple ways to do things …

by geophph

6/6/2026 at 11:36:07 AM

The correct alternative is to make no motto at all. It's code. Makes computer go brrr.

by kgwxd

6/6/2026 at 12:10:34 PM

Yeah, I actually don't care how other people program in the languages I'm using. Give me all the ways to do things. I'll make my own choices, thank you.

by moron4hire

6/6/2026 at 12:18:40 PM

Someone cooked up a language just like this ages ago, and today it's one of the most popular languages on the planet! Unfortunately, in modern times people don't like to write/code in this language, so they built some beast on top of it which is the de facto standard right now. But you can still write JavaScript, and you can avoid all the shit parts like "classes" and what not, do classic prototype-style programming, or even layer your own functional/OOP programming on top. Not much you cannot do in JavaScript, probably only a lisp would enable more programming paradigms, but for mainstream languages, it's as close as you can get to True Freedom.

by embedding-shape

6/6/2026 at 12:46:03 PM

> Resource allocation may fail

Yes it can. But it's nearly impossible to handle such cases properly. That's why checking each allocation manually is a bad idea. Other languages do this better - they provide nice abstractions, but if something fails, the language runtime terminates the process. The result is the same, but has much less friction.

Also on some systems (like Linux) memory allocation may not fail, but the "allocated" memory may not be available and a program can crash accessing this memory.

by Panzerschrek

6/6/2026 at 12:55:00 PM

Zig is in the space of languages where an abstraction that decides that memory allocations are irrecoverable is not good enough.

If you work in an environment where memory allocations can't fail or can't be handled if they fail, you might not want to use Zig, or C for that matter. Not every language should be designed to live in the space of "somehow low level but also a good choice for your basic web backend", like Rust.

by lionkor

6/6/2026 at 2:24:02 PM

Rust doesn't stop you from checking if memory allocation has failed. Its libstd provides many operations that don't bother to surface memory allocation failure (for the reasons given above), but that's why Rust provides a libcore that does no allocation, while continually working to push more things down from libstd into libcore, while providing alternative APIs in libstd to let you handle allocation failure if you know you actually need to.

by kibwen

6/6/2026 at 2:59:15 PM

Conversely, Rust doesn't force you to explicitly handle if memory allocation failures. The least you can do in Zig is explicitly ignore allocation failures.

by Zambyte

6/6/2026 at 3:37:09 PM

You can certainly write data structures in Zig that swallow allocation failures rather than surfacing them. We're talking about library-level concerns, not language-level concerns. Both Rust and Zig give you the power to allocate raw memory and handle the result of that syscall however you want, it's the standard libraries that differ beyond that point.

by kibwen

6/6/2026 at 1:56:40 PM

> If you work in an environment where memory allocations can't fail or can't be handled if they fail, you might not want to use Zig,

It's most of environments. Basically any program running under a modern OS. So, why do this language exists, if its practical applicability is so small?

by Panzerschrek

6/6/2026 at 2:55:57 PM

This language exists so you can reuse the same code in environments where memory allocations may fail, and where memory allocations can't fail.

Let's say you write an application that runs as a Unix daemon in Zig. Later you may decide that your application is really the only thing you're interested in running on the target machine, and for performance and predictability reasons, you'd prefer to boot directly to your application, instead of to an OS that launches your daemon. You can just swap out the implementation of the std.Io runtime for one that targets the hardware directly, instead of a Unix. You don't have to make any changes to your application.

That's kind of an extreme case, but it's the kind of flexibility Zig provides.

by Zambyte

6/6/2026 at 3:27:36 PM

> This language exists so you can reuse the same code in environments where memory allocations may fail, and where memory allocations can't fail.

In my hypothetical example of a language where allocation fails aren't exposed it's possible too. An allocation fail just triggers a full system reboot.

by Panzerschrek

6/6/2026 at 2:32:58 PM

On modern OSs you can write Zig and just ignore allocation errors. It doesn't force you to handle them properly.

This language exists to supercede or supplement C, not JavaScript or C#.

It's practical applicability is similar to that of C, so I struggle to comprehend how it is "so small".

by lionkor

6/6/2026 at 3:24:39 PM

> On modern OSs you can write Zig and just ignore allocation errors.

I can ignore errors, but I still need to free memory manually if I want to avoid memory leaks. Languages like C++ or Rust have destructors, which do the job for me.

> This language exists to supercede or supplement C

There are way better alternatives, like Rust. Even C++ is better.

by Panzerschrek

6/6/2026 at 1:39:44 PM

Several things:

* There are many useful ways to handle it properly, and your choice depends on your program's constraints. The very small amount of friction (once you're used to it) encourages you to consider what ways to handle it are viable, such as allocating all memory at startup.

* If your strategy is to crash immediately, there is very little additional friction but you get the benefit of it being obvious in your code that this is the case.

* There are environments where memory allocation fails immediately, including if you turn off over-commit on Linux. If your hardware is dedicated to running a high reliability system, configuring it in this way is reasonable.

* Memory is not the only resource. Indeed, removing the special call out is what changed here. That different resources are handled with the same mechanism (errors, instead of eg returning null from malloc) is good.

by Laremere

6/6/2026 at 1:55:05 PM

Autors of Zig did a choice for me. I can't use RAII in it. In C++ it's better - when I don't care, I just use standard library containers, when I do care, I can bypass them.

by Panzerschrek

6/6/2026 at 1:31:17 PM

You might have a limited budget per incoming request in a http server for example. Then you want all of the code that http handler calls to be able to handle an error of type something like OutOfMemory.

This is a very good ability to have in an application like a database.

by ozgrakkurt

6/6/2026 at 2:03:44 PM

Such things should be solved in more nice way, not by manually checking every allocation. Like via lightweight threads, with each of them having their own memory and a scheduler, which kills threads exceeding their memory limit.

by Panzerschrek

6/6/2026 at 3:17:58 PM

This compilicates things more compared to functions returning Result<>.

You also get locality benefits from bump style allocators. And you don't need SmallVec or similar optimization containers. And you also avoid mental overhead of managing many allocations in your head (or using a language with borrow checking).

by ozgrakkurt

6/6/2026 at 3:22:20 PM

> This compilicates things more compared to functions returning Result<>.

Checking each Result in a large program is more complicated than having a runtime library handling memory limits properly.

> And you also avoid mental overhead of managing many allocations in your head

That's exactly what languages like Zig force you to do, compared to something like C++ or Rust.

> or using a language with borrow checking

borrow checking gives memory safety. It's also important to have.

by Panzerschrek

6/6/2026 at 1:00:32 PM

Nearly impossible in some contexts, where the trade-off makes sense.

There are many scenarios, especially in embedded systems, where it can happen and you want to handle it robustly, e.g. by evicting a cache or flushing a buffer to disk.

by underdeserver

6/6/2026 at 1:59:36 PM

In embedded systems you have enough control. But as soon as an OS is involved, you have much less control. Basically an OS may do with your process whatever it wants, but it happens to be polite most of the time.

by Panzerschrek

6/6/2026 at 9:24:56 AM

Glad to see "Together we serve the users" come back. I miss the old Zig readme that said Zig comes with an MIT license and a humble request to build software that serves the users.

by Validark

6/6/2026 at 9:31:58 AM

It was already there though.

by JakobJK

6/6/2026 at 11:25:48 AM

the green is from moving the line

by ulbu

6/6/2026 at 12:33:51 PM

actually, they added exclamation

by nurumaik

6/6/2026 at 3:01:21 PM

They moved it out of the bullet list in the CLI version, and added it to the web version.

by Zambyte

6/6/2026 at 12:32:02 PM

OT: any word on how Codeberg has been working out for Zig?

by alberth

6/6/2026 at 3:56:10 PM

the maintainers seem happy, especially now that CI is actually working how it's supposed to. but a non-rare complaint in the Zig discord is how slow Codeberg can be, and other things like the lack of codesearch hurt as well.

by peesem

6/6/2026 at 9:18:31 AM

I'm out of the loop. Is there any context? Can't pick up on what really changed here.

by rowbin

6/6/2026 at 9:27:37 AM

The link shows the exact diff

by dgellow

6/6/2026 at 9:34:49 AM

I saw what changed syntactically. I meant I don't really understand what changed semantically. And whether there is any context to why the change was necessary.

by rowbin

6/6/2026 at 9:49:29 AM

The commit message feels clear to me? It seems Andrew wanted to clean the zig zen slightly, it’s not a big change:

> - rewordings

> - "memory is a resource" goes without saying

> - emphasize the final point

by dgellow

6/6/2026 at 12:01:23 PM

I'm guessing the parent is wondering why this is noteworthy enough to be posted and discussed in this thread, and so if there's context they are missing

by frde_me

6/6/2026 at 1:03:37 PM

I'm wondering the same: why is this change significant enough to reach the frontpage on Hacker News?

by Izmaki

6/6/2026 at 2:09:48 PM

Someone felt that was interesting and submitted it. People noticed Zig and upvoted. That would be my guess

by dgellow

6/6/2026 at 10:04:09 AM

I don't see how Zig will ever contend with Odin, Jai, C3 and others when they drive away half of the prospective users with activism.

by melon_tusk

6/6/2026 at 11:21:07 AM

I recommend you to watch Andrew Kelly interview[0], while I'm not the target audience of Zig, I don't see him driving away any user. Also Jai as for now is a non existing language, just a selected few has access to it, but Jai approach is a kitchen sink, from what I saw it is all over the place in terms of features, now Zig vision feels cohesive.

[0] https://youtu.be/iqddnwKF8HQ

by norman784

6/6/2026 at 2:02:06 PM

Thanks for sharing that link. That guy seems so nice, quite inspiring.

by jraph

6/6/2026 at 10:56:29 AM

Activism as in their move away from GitHub? Andrew K recently said in the JetBrains interview that because of moving away, their CI/CD now actually works.

by jordand

6/6/2026 at 10:10:23 AM

What activism is that?

by dom96

6/6/2026 at 10:13:23 AM

trying to make good software :^)

by kristoff_it

6/6/2026 at 10:20:16 AM

truly a tragedy! how dare you make good software!?!

by quarkz14

6/6/2026 at 10:52:42 AM

I think they banned AI and moved from GitHub to Codeberg. They don't seem too controversial to me, and IMO they've already comprehensively trounced Odin, Jai and C3.

by IshKebab

6/6/2026 at 10:48:44 AM

I've never seen any activism from the Zig crowd (I assume you need Woke and rubbing "pride" or "Ukraine" into everything). Did I miss something?

by sgt

6/6/2026 at 10:57:04 AM

> I assume you need Woke and rubbing "pride" or "Ukraine" into everything

wow, what a self report

by midnight_eclair

6/6/2026 at 12:07:08 PM

Jai isn't even available publicly. The license isn't decided. Jonathan Blow doesn't want to deal with open source.

Comparing Jai and Zig on that behalf is crazy.

Edit: If that is about political activism it's even more crazy. A dude that rambles about woke stuff is political as well. Maybe just aligns with yours.

by Yokohiii

6/6/2026 at 11:30:36 AM

Excuse me, but I think zig grows ever better from driving away users who are driven away by flashy headlines and whatever is the opposite of this “activism” you suggest.

by ulbu

6/6/2026 at 3:58:57 PM

>when they drive away half of the prospective users with activism.

Like what? Plenty of people here follows Zig here and haven't seen any of it. And by any measure it is the least activism per language usage.

by ksec

6/6/2026 at 10:21:27 AM

[flagged]

by logicchains

6/6/2026 at 10:58:59 AM

I'm not sure that if this is an obvious question that has been gone through already, but have any of the death threats relating to Rust stuff actually been "verified" or is it just an opinion that has been repeated enough times until it has been accepted as truth?

Just the open amount of discontent towards the language and the community, creates the perfect storm for a malicious individual to pose being a Rust developer that sends death threats for doing things that are not aligned with the values of the language/community.

by Permik