zig

Zig is a general-purpose programming language and toolchain designed for robustness, predictable performance, and cross-platform development. It aims to be a simpler, safer alternative to C in many systems programming tasks while preserving low-level control. The language ships with its own compiler and build system, and emphasizes a minimal runtime, explicit semantics, and strong interoperability with C.

Language features include explicit error handling using error sets and the try/catch style, optional safety checks, and manual memory management via allocators. A distinctive capability is comptime, which allows code to be evaluated and generated at compile time. Zig avoids hidden control flow, has facilities such as defer for cleanup, and supports inline assembly for low-level programming. It also provides robust cross-compilation support, enabling building for diverse targets from a single host.

Toolchain and ecosystem: The zig compiler doubles as a build system and package manager, and provides tooling such as zig fmt and zig test. The standard library supplies common data structures, concurrency primitives, and various allocators. Interoperability with C is central, with straightforward integration of C headers and libraries, controlled ABIs, and seamless linking.

History and reception: Andrew Kelley initiated Zig as a research-to-production language, with ongoing development by an open community. It has found use in systems programming, embedded development, tooling, and projects requiring predictable cross-compilation, but remains a comparatively niche language with a developing ecosystem.