Zig is intended to be as robust as it can be as long as it doesn’t implicitly add code (no destructors that run code you didn’t explicitly call), or increase compiler complexity and compilation time.
I don’t think it makes sense to say Zig is or isn’t intended to be robust in general. Like, we don’t say Rust isn’t robust since it doesn’t add dependent types and general purpose static verification that can do more general proofs. It’s focused on eliminating one class of memory bugs in particular, exactly the class of bugs that are the biggest challenge for software like Bun, and other software with complex lifetimes (it originated from Mozilla and Rust is perfect for browsers)
Zig is intended to be robust for software like TigerBeetle, or the Zig compiler itself, where memory lifetimes are simple.
I’d say the focus on built in tests, fuzzing, debug memory allocators and safe mode shows that Zig is absolutely intended to be robust, within the scope of what the language aims to be. Far more than C itself or most of its popular compilers ever did.
A casual read of TigerBeetle's practices makes it clear they're doing some very unusual things, both in their memory allocation strategy and in their testing/verification.
Despite TigerBeetle being one of the highest-profile remaining Zig projects, I actually don't think they're representative of the average Zig project at all.
It is quite representative of an embedded software project. TigerBeetle is not what we usually call embedded software, but it is built like it: static memory allocation, a self-contained executable, and a strong focus on determinism are typical in that field, especially for critical software.
And I think embedded software is a field where Zig will be at its best. The only thing it is missing is maturity. When project lifetimes are measured in decades and changing a single byte can cost millions, no one in his right mind will pick a language that is still in development. Things will become interesting when it reaches 1.0.
Static memory allocation is idiomatic in high-performance software. You do the same in C++ if you care about performance and reliability.
Can you elaborate on the unusual part?
All necessary memory is allocated at initialization. The application is not allowed any allocations during it's normal runtime. This is how it avoid memory bugs.
Not a lot of people write programs this way.
Static memory allocation is widely used in quite a bit of embedded software, particularly safety critical stuff. There it's often latency related since you don't want hangs while memory is allocated.
I've even seen it on some simulation software's core that was written in the 80s originally; at the time memory was much more constrained so allocating upfront meant you could check upfront whether the simulation could actually run or not vs crashing out part way through.
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A lot of people write software like this when predictable latency is a hard requirement.
Andrew Kelleys original motivation for creating Zig was language that allowed precise low-level control for real-time audio processing.
"Kelley describes why he created Zig, when other options including C, C++, Rust, and Go already exist. He said he set out to develop a digital audio workstation. He tried Go, but found interoperability with C libraries difficult, and said the garbage collector caused audio delays. He tried C++, or coding C-style using a C++ compiler, but found that small mistakes led to memory corruption bugs that took weeks to fix. He tried Rust but "really struggled to write code that would satisfy Rust's rules," and spent a month trying to make font rendering work."
https://www.theregister.com/software/2026/05/28/zig-creator-...
I was just learning yesterday that's exactly what GTA did on PS2, which I thought was interesting. (Not to belittle your point, just giving an example)
This is how basically every console video game works.
I do this in Unity because allocations/GC cause hitches. it's pretty normal thing to do there's even the built in pooling libraries so you can pre-allocate 10,000 gameobjects when the game starts. I haven't played with ECS/DOTS yet but I assume it does something similar.
This is standard practice in the games industry.
I do. The only thing I need dynamic allocations for is queues of asynchronous events, and that's just because I'm too lazy to calculate an upper bound for how many there may be.
> Like, we don’t say Rust isn’t robust since it doesn’t add dependent types and general purpose static verification that can do more general proofs.
Give it a few years! I've noticed an explosion in interest in formal verification recently, especially since nowadays the bar to entry is so low: just ask your LLM agent to give it a go.