I always wondered if Zig might be a phonetic play on “six”, the atomic number of carbon (c). Pretty awesome to discover that there’s a strategy underpinning the name.
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I have been lurking here since the beginning, and I just want to tell something to @andrewrk. The fact Zig exists makes me very happy. I do c++ game programming in Unreal during the day, and Zig at night for various little hobby projects. I agree with precisely all decisions you made about Zig’s design. It is uncanny, really. I study changelists and get excited with every little thing. Anyway, please proceed with making the zig the best thing ever. Don’t get distracted by all the noise about haters, and AI, and money, and whatnot… just push through… We need you man.
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Really enjoyed the interview - and find the ideological takes exceptionally compelling and refreshing in a tech space that is so dominated by growth-oriented money-seeking short-term narratives.
There’s something strangely pleasing for me about one of the best programming language experiences I’ve had with zig arising out of a pure nonprofit focus - I’ve always believed in the long term that nonprofit human focused work should outcompete and out innovate profit focused work - and Zig is a great example of this.
And yes, I would subscribe to Andrew’s imaginary politics podcast, and I imagine by entering that space he’d finally experience burnout… 
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his talk about AI hit home for sure. i am working on (over ambitiously) developing (only fine-tuned ollama-coder atm) my own models, have my own agent and editor (both in C). the primary goal is local first, running virtually anywhere (i can currently use it on iSh for iphone even), and truly open AI access. the org repo is a little discombobulated atm as i am like mid push on a lot of things atm. would eventually convert to zig if i could indeed run it anywhere.
A fantastic interview. I just wanna shoutout the entire Zig core team and contributor community for a moment. This entire community, just as Andrew, has been a very positive role model for me, motivating me endlessly to continue growing as a software developer and engineer. Your selflessness and eagerness to collaborate and meet each other’s needs (both socially and technologically) restores my faith in humanity, and I feel the passion for software perfection through my screen in the issue tracker. It makes me excited to wake up and continue doing my what I do. Andrew’s point of inspiring and mentoring students is really true, and I just want you to know that even if Zig never replaces C, there is an entire generation of new software developers like me that are inspired by your work. Thanks all, from someone that’s been watching quietly from the sidelines.
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I just wanted to drop in to mention that I think that interview was really great!
Clearly Andrew invested time and effort into preparing for the questions to be able to reply in a super-clear and nice way.
I found his tone was very measured and the video will be a great ad for zig. Great job Andrew!
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Nice interview, Andrew lets you feel his happiness about Zig very well.
However strange: the video thumbnail (at least in my browser) shows “why Zig doesn’t need AI (yet)”. While AI was a topic, it wasn’t the topic. And what is this “yet” about? Seems like a try catching attention with a controversial teaser; especially regarding Zig’s anti-AI policy (suggesting that might change in the future… maybe… who knows… “Stay tuned with JetBrains…”).
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Started learning Zig with Ziglings today, heard Andrew talking (how to get started). Btw loved the talk, have to say it’s one of the most well articulated talks after a long time.
Zig is very new to me, I’m not a systems guy and been watching from the shadows, was always excited about it, after this interview I made the commitment to learn it!
Hoping to build some cool stuff.
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Clickbait titles are shameless.
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Dude you are unreal!!!
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Have to say, I’m seeing quite a lot of “Why haven’t I heard about Zig before?” messages in various places. I think this interview got some traction.
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Andrew is inspiring. I watched the entire interview than had to go tell my wife about Andrew’s vision with Zig even though she hasn’t got the slightest interest in the programming world but she still was impressed with his ideas including thoughts on A.I..
Cheers Andrew, I can’t wait to see you on the cover of WIRED if that’s still a thing!
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I sent this interview to a few friends and two of them followed up to ask more about Zig. Happy to have helped them get it set up and shared Ziglings and some YouTube video links with them. One person in particular said that they are enjoying doing “real” programming again, for fun, instead of the corporate, boring same old same old we have to do to earn our keep.
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Also sent it to a few people who got more excited than I expected. When I’d talked Zig in the past from a purely technical standpoint they seemed interested but ultimately didn’t pursue it. Which is fine, there’s only so much time in the day. But they took to the video immediately and started playing with the language. I didn’t expect the higher level framing of the interview to be as motivating as it was, but man do people seem to resonate with the human goals of the project!
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youtube gonna motivate people to youtube, i guess
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I’m here because of that interview. I’m a long time C programmer and I have looked at Zig years ago and had made a mental note to come back at some point for a closer look but never got to it. However when the interview popped up I clicked right away and was blown away by Andrew’s intelligence and the philosophy behind Zig. It was extremely refreshing and energizing, especially since I’ve been in a state of extreme disillusionment with the whole techno-fascist-corporate industrial complex so Andrew’s opinions and the nonprofit setup and taking the time needed to get it right really speaks to me too.
So I’ve been soaking up Zig since then like a sponge. 
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Hahaha very well stated
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