Writing a C Compiler, in Zig

Re:Writing a C Compiler, in Zig by Ygg2 on Thursday April 23, 2026 @10:35AM (#47876257)

> That being said Rust is definitely a much higher level language than either C or Zig. The availability of `Arc` and `Box`, the existence and reliance on `drop`

I mean, C++ have RAII and stuff like unique pointer, does that make it higher level than Zig?

And what if you don't use Arc or Box? Is your program now lower level than baseline Rust?

As I said, depends a lot about what you mean by low level.

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Re:Writing a C Compiler, in Zig by namr2000 on Thursday April 23, 2026 @10:46AM (#47876384)

It depends on the facilities the language offers to you by default right?

C++ offers much higher level primitives out of the box compared to Zig, so I'd say its a higher level language. Of course you can ignore all the features of C++ and just write C, but that's not why people are picking the language.

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Re:Writing a C Compiler, in Zig by zamadatix on Thursday April 23, 2026 @12:51PM (#47878070)

I'd say so. Zig is aiming to be a bit smarter than C while staying at roughly the same level. C++ more sought/seeks to support C but offer higher level things with it.

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Re:Writing a C Compiler, in Zig by DarkUranium on Monday April 27, 2026 @08:24AM (#47920669)

I feel like Zig is to C what Rust is to C++, kind of.

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Re:Writing a C Compiler, in Zig by resonancel on Thursday April 23, 2026 @10:18PM (#47884727)

IMO "level" roughly corresponds to the amount of runtime control flow hidden by abstractions. Zig is famous for having almost no hidden runtime control flow, this appears pretty "low level" to many. OTOH, Zig can have highly non-trivial hidden compile time control flow thanks to comptime reflection, but hardly anyone identifies Zig as a "high level" metaprogramming language.

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