I like Zig because it feels like a refinement of C with all the knowledge of the years since C was created. Some of my favorite features are no global allocator, well-defined pointers (with optionals required for nullability), generics and partial evaluation at compile-time, and builtin features/functions for all sorts of operations that are only extensions in C/C++ like SIMD and packed structs.

Read [0] for a comparison among Zig, D, Rust, and C++, and read [1] for a deeper look at the language's goals. I personally really love Zig's type system [2], with a system for generics that is very simple and consistent.

[0]: https://ziglang.org/learn/why_zig_rust_d_cpp/

[1]: https://ziglang.org/learn/overview/

[2]: https://nathancraddock.com/blog/consistency-in-zigs-type-sys...