Re:Why Zig over C for Systems Programming
by lukaslalinsky on Friday November 13, 2026 @03:00PM
(#50488853)
That's overly confident. When I see Rust code, I'm immediately reminded of Scala and how it was supposed to take over the JVM world, but did not, and Kotlin, a much simpler language, is getting more and more popular. You might claim that LLMs have no problem with that kind of language complexity, but people still need to review stuff. I have no doubt that Rust will reach C++ level of popularity, but that still leaves a lot of space for other low-level languages.
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Scala "failed" for two reasons: Firstly, (like Haskell) it quickly exceeded its weirdness budget, and cultivated a community that embraced and sustained that weirdness. Secondly, a number of prominent individuals publicly expressed political views that made it hard for engineers in "mainstream" organisations to loudly promote Scala.
I think Rust is doing much better on both fronts. It has always been a more pragmatic language than Scala, and the way it is developed supports that, rather than pushing the weirdness budget higher. The overall political lean of the Rust community is also more amenable to support in mainstream institutions + companies.