I imagine it's a difficult time to be a Zig developer.
In the near term, Bun choosing to switch from Zig to Rust specifically to fix all the memory errors seems to have done the Zig community some psychological damage.
But more significantly, in the medium term it looks likely that AI coding is going to overtake the industry before Zig gets properly established. And it is going to be very hard to justify choosing Zig for your sloppy-but-functional AI-written code - why open yourself up to memory unsafety on top of everything else? Further, the Zig community appears to value a hand-crafted, 'artisanal' approach to software development, which is the very antithesis of vibecoding.
I have no particular interest in Zig as a language but definitely feel some empathy here. The industry is changing in ways that many of us are struggling to process.
In the near term, Bun choosing to switch from Zig to Rust specifically to fix all the memory errors seems to have done the Zig community some psychological damage.
But more significantly, in the medium term it looks likely that AI coding is going to overtake the industry before Zig gets properly established. And it is going to be very hard to justify choosing Zig for your sloppy-but-functional AI-written code - why open yourself up to memory unsafety on top of everything else? Further, the Zig community appears to value a hand-crafted, 'artisanal' approach to software development, which is the very antithesis of vibecoding.
I have no particular interest in Zig as a language but definitely feel some empathy here. The industry is changing in ways that many of us are struggling to process.