Or Rust being the anti Zig alternative for people who have spent years/decades accumulating weird knowledge about the finer details of type systems and maintain that not being able to express an algorithm, or review one, without consulting a language lawyer (or becoming one) is a critical feature to have and that build times don't matter.
The point is that all languages, including those two, make very clear and sometimes significant tradeoffs that may be more or less appropriate in different circumstances or for different people, and, at least so far, no consensus about the "right" tradeoff has emerged.
How is Rust anti zig if it came first?
It was a joke premised on the implicit assumption that Zig must be an "anti-Rust" because it came later. Maybe you could call different approaches contrarian if Rust had achieved some great popularity or consensus, but it hasn't. Rust's adoption rate is low because many don't find it enticing enough, and so it's unsurprising that there are several other approaches in the space of low-level programming - which is due for some update - that are all different from each other. Their attempts to improve on C and C++ in different ways don't make them "anti" anything else.
Ron Presler (the person you're responding to) is pathologically anti-Rust since before the birth of Zig.
Oh, I'm very pro Rust. I think that its use of the borrow checker is inspired and quite spectacular, that we can learn a lot from it. I just don't like it (as a practical programming language). It's not for me and for people who have similar preferences.
I am, however, very much anti claims made by some Rust fans that take an empirical and universal nature and are simply not known to be true (e.g. it is true that the more memory safety guarantees the fewer the vulnerabilities - all else being equal - but it is quite simply logically incorrect to conclude from that that the best way to minimise vulnerabilities is to have more sound safety guarantees).
I think Rust is a fantastic fit for some people who want to do low-level programming, and a pretty bad fit for others (like me). Same goes for Zig or, really, almost any language. Obviously, neither one is inherently or universally superior to the other.
BTW, my enthusiasm for Zig is not because I like all of its design decisions, but mostly because it's so different from most other languages and, in some cases, its decisions run contrary to my personal inclination (e.g. with regards to encapsulation) that I'm fascinated to know how it works out. Rust, on the other hand, is less interesting for me to think about, because aside from the more intensive typechecking (that I'm already familiar with from other languages) the overall experience it offers is quite similar to C++. Maybe I won't like what Zig ends up becoming, but for someone who's seen so many languages, it's really interesting to come across something so fresh.
> Oh, I'm very pro Rust.
Maybe you don't want to admit it at this point, but you've spent literal hours of your time (more likely tens of hours, in fact given the sheer volume of comments) on this very forum explaining why Rust was dead on arrival because it was too complex.
Now I get that such a position is hard to defend now that Rust has pretty much won and is running on everyone's phone and computer, but such a volume of disparagement on every single Rust post didn't go unnoticed.
I'm glad you've fixed your anger issue, unless you're just being an hypocrite right now.
Oh, I didn't mean to touch a sore spot, I just assumed that by now it was obvious to everyone that a highly-marketed 10+-year-old language with less than 2% market penetration is unlikely (at least based on historical trends) to meet even the modest goal of half of the low-level software market (I wonder what someone who reads the numbers as "Rust pretty much won" would make of, say, Go's success, that is, at best, moderate but disappointing; still well behind Ruby).
BTW, I spend longer on sillier. Years ago, my therapist suggested spending my downtime online activity on low-stake matters, so as far as programming is concerned, you might find quite a bit of Rust and Haskell. But you should really see my Lego and whisky rants. If I were to comment much on politics or Python I would fear for my blood pressure.
> Oh, I didn't mean to touch a sore spot
There's no sore spot, though you definitely tried to find one to touch, or at least that's the only way I can rationaly explain your obsession with posting troll comments in every Rust threads for years. Which ends up getting annoying even if every single comment misses the mark.
> 10+-year-old language with less than 2% market penetration is unlikely
You seem to fail to realize that there's very little market for unmanaged languages at all. I don't think C or C++ have more than a single digit market share percentage each in 2025 either.
For most programming tasks, JavaScript and PHP are good enough and there's no way you're going to use Rust (or even Java) for those.
> I wonder what someone who reads the numbers as "Rust pretty much won" would make of, say, Go's success, that is, at best, moderate but disappointing; still well behind Ruby
Go's success is very solid compared to pretty much every language invented in the 21th century, but ultimately it fights in the same category as the mainstream giants so it's hard (read: impossible) to really become dominant.
Rust on the other hand is targeting a much narrower niche where the competition has been crippled by security vulnerabilities and poor developer experience, but also has much stricter performance characteristics, which served as a moat for a while.
For its niche, Rust has definitely won the status of “it's the future and we must use it as much as we can from now on” (though for its niche, the code tends to live much longer than for the disposable “app” code, so Rust isn't going to replace the existing C or C++ this decade or the next, and that's fine).
> BTW, I spend longer on sillier. Years ago, my therapist suggested spending my downtime online activity on low-stake matters
Weird flex but OK.
Ten years in, Rust jobs are barely 10% of C or C++ jobs, if that. In any market segment, that is not the kind of adoption that successful products usually display.
Judging from the emotion in your comment, I sense that I did touch a nerve, and I'm sorry. As a programming language/platform professional, I'm obviously interested in both language design and market adoption, and I share some of my personal perspectives. That Rust's adoption is significantly lower than that of programming languages that become dominant - in any market slice - is not something I thought is controversial, regardless of one's like or dislike of the language. But I know that some programmers make their programming language preference a part of their identity, and react emotionally to analyses or opinions they don't like.
It's normal to disagree, as experts often do, but once it gets emotional, perhaps it's best to turn away. So I apologise for causing you discomfort, and perhaps if you find my comments too distressing, just skip them and move on. Getting stressed about things like this is not worth it.
> Ten years in, Rust jobs are barely 10% of C or C++ jobs, if that. In any market segment, that is not the kind of adoption that successful products usually display.
Says who? As I said above neither C or C++ aren't going anywhere in the near future, and we're talking about a programming niche where there's little new code compared to the existing base.
The fact is that most people on this planet are using an OS or a web browser that has started migrating security sensitive sections to Rust. That Rust is now part of the standard CompSci curriculum in many parts of the world. And that it's the go-to language for new low-level/performance sensitive projects.
But of course it's never going to be enough to convince the perennial naysayers.
> Judging from the emotion in your comment, I sense that I did touch a nerve
Sorry for you, but you did not manage that.
> and I'm sorry
We both know that you aren't, I know you're a troll and a flamebaiter, people like you thrive by the idea of enraging your interlocutor.
On the other side, I'm just glad I exposed your hypocrisy. Looks like pretending you were “pro-Rust” was too hard to maintain for an extended period of time.
> just skip them and move on. Getting stressed about things like this is not worth it.
Remember, you are the one with anger management issue under medical supervision, most people aren't like that ;).
Chill out kiddos.