Yeah, that's a bit of a turnoff. The rest of the article (until the paywall) was alright.
Zig's use of comptime is fairly revolutionary in a c-like language. Compared to the shenanigans required by c++, the entire language* is (should be) available at comptime. Compared to the backtick/quote/macro magic available in lisp... the awesomeness isn't that it's comptime, the awesomeness is that it's type safe.
But, I'd say it isn't even the use of comptime that's particularly noteworthy, it's the lack of pretty much every feature that isn't comptime. This wouldn't be a good idea without comptime being as robust and featureful as it is.
Zig's use of comptime is fairly revolutionary in a c-like language. Compared to the shenanigans required by c++, the entire language* is (should be) available at comptime. Compared to the backtick/quote/macro magic available in lisp... the awesomeness isn't that it's comptime, the awesomeness is that it's type safe.
But, I'd say it isn't even the use of comptime that's particularly noteworthy, it's the lack of pretty much every feature that isn't comptime. This wouldn't be a good idea without comptime being as robust and featureful as it is.
* nope, see puffoflogic's reply