From a developer soon to retire

Brainstorming
1

(English is not my native language, this message is translated by Google, I apologize in advance if some of the translation doesn’t reflect what I mean.)

I hesitated for a long time before writing this message.

I’m 59 years old, I’ve been coding since I was 14, Basic on the ZX81 and Commodore 64, assembly and C on the Amiga during a stint at a game publisher, then Pascal on PC and Macintosh, C++ with Microsoft MFC, then Java, then Go, then Rust out of curiosity. My tools were Lattice C, Turbo Pascal, Delphi, MPW, Metrowerks CodeWarrior, QT, Visual C++, etc.

Today, when I work on network tools for my employer, I always ask Claude for a C, Go, Rust and Zig version.

The Zig version, even AI-generated and unoptimized, is the most pleasant one to read.

The software development world is going through an irreversible shift.

For example, my son works at a large international bank, and in his team almost no one writes code anymore.

In the past, custom development was too expensive and always rejected by managers; today it’s off-the-shelf software that’s too expensive.

At my company we built an excellent monitoring platform with three.js for a twentieth of the price of the ready-made solution pushed by a software vendor.

In the end we got something that perfectly matches our needs and is easy to maintain over time — that would have been impossible just 24 months ago.

And this trend, if you look at the latest studies from the major consulting firms (Gartner and McKinsey), is advancing everywhere.

Zig should be part of this and take the place of the language that lets a developer do everything quickly and cleanly, with or without AI help.

Realistically, Zig will probably never match what Rust has achieved — it’s too late for that. The investment in Rust is too massive, the commitment from every player in the language too significant. Bun’s rewrite finished convincing average developers like me that Rust could make it into enterprises.

But like many people, I love Zig, and I don’t want to see it become a niche language for a handful of very good developers.

For this reason, would it be possible to have a roadmap, even an imperfect one, toward version 1, similar to what was announced for Odin.

I know this goes against the general opinion of no rushing, no AI — but this game-changer is moving so fast in enterprises that I’m afraid Zig will arrive too late and miss this huge opportunity to be here to stay.

Thank you all for your work.

4 Likes
2

there is a roadmap, i thought.

by the way, i know this is a shifting topic, but i’ll say that i would much prefer handwritten english or a message not in english to machine translation. machine translation results in a subset of English common to AI agent-speak and punchy ad copy that I personally find grating to read, especially when it doesn’t match what I perceive to be the content of the post.

3

Voici la version originale.
J’ai longtemps hésité avant d’adresser ce message.

J’ai 59 ans, je code depuis l’âge de 14 ans, Basic sur ZX81 et Commodore 64, assembleur et C sur Amiga au cours d’un passage chez un éditeur de jeu, ensuite Pascal sur PC et Macintosh, Cpp avec Microsoft MFC, ensuite Java, ensuite Go, ensuite Rust par curiosité. Mes outils ont été Lattice C, Turbo Pascal, Delphi, MPW, Metrowerks CodeWarrior, QT, Visual C++, etc…

Aujourd’hui quand je travaille sur des outils réseaux pour mon employeur, je demande toujours une version C, Go, Rust et Zig à Claude.

La version Zig, même générée par une IA et non optimisée, est la plus agréable à relire.

Le monde du développement logiciel est en train d’opérer un renversement irréversible.

Par exemple, mon fils travaille dans une grande banque internationale et dans son équipe plus personne ne code.

Auparavant les développements spécifiques coutaient trop cher, toujours refusés par les managers, aujourd’hui c’est le logiciel standard qui coûte trop cher.

Dans mon entreprise on a fait une superbe plateforme de supervision avec three.js pour le 20 ième du prix de la solution déjà prête poussée par un éditeur logiciel.

Au final on a quelque chose qui correspond parfaitement à notre besoin et maintenable facilement dans le temps, cela aurait été impossible il y a encore 24 mois.

Et cette tendance, si on regarde les dernières études des grands cabinets de conseil (Gartner et McKinsey), elle est en train d’avancer partout.

Zig doit participer à cela et prendre la place du langage qui permettra à un développeur de tout faire rapidement et proprement avec l’aide d’une IA ou sans.

A la régulière Zig ne pourra jamais égaler ce qu’a réussi Rust, c’est trop tard. Les investissements dans Rust sont trop massifs, les engagements de tous les acteurs dans le langage trop important. La réécriture de Bun a terminé de convaincre les développeurs moyens comme moi que Rust pouvait entrer dans les entreprises.

Mais comme beaucoup de personnes j’aime Zig et je ne souhaite pas le voir devenir un langage de niche pour une poignée de très bons développeurs.

Pour cette raison, est-il possible d’avoir une roadmap, même imparfaite, vers la version 1 à l’image de ce qui a été annoncé pour Odin.

Je sais que cela vient contre l’opinion générale qui est, pas de précipitations, pas d’IA mais ce game changer est tellement rapide dans les entreprises, j’ai peur que Zig arrive trop tard et rate cette immense opportunité d’être là pour rester.

Merci à vous tous pour votre travail.

1 Like
4

What is it too late for? What’s the rush? And don’t get me wrong I’d love a Zig 1.0, but I appreciate how methodical Zig, as I am writing it and as it is being developed.

There is a 2026 roadmap in the News category

In games it’s said that adding more people/money to a project makes it bigger before it makes it faster. A bigger programming language might have a better/fleshed-out std library, maybe it has superfluous and confusing language features. There’s another popular thread debating what to remove from the language1, so I think it’s generally agreed among this community we want small strong features over many weak and confusing additions.

If you are already satisfied- and even prefer Zig with LLM-generated code, why do you need Zig to be 1.0? Do you need a 1.0 badge to convince your team to accept the language? Wouldn’t this new LLM stuff be more in-dev and unstable than Zig, especially if we’re talking about price hikes? What is it exactly you would want changed from the language?

5

Thank you for your reply.
You may not work in a large company, but today it is no longer accurate to call LLM tools unstable; in fact, the exact opposite is true. In less than a year, they have forever changed the way the vast majority of developers worldwide work.
What I would like to see is for Zig to stabilize a version 1 release that enables LLMs to generate increasingly high-quality Zig code.
Zig is highly performant, and this performance translates into energy savings—and thus more environmentally sustainable operations.
I want as many people as possible to benefit from Zig’s inherent qualities; since the majority of developers use LLMs, I want all LLMs to be capable of producing excellent Zig code.

1 Like
6

By “unstable” I meant that the LLM tools are changing rapidly, which you agree LLMs have been changing rapidly within the last year. This is at odds with wanting Zig to stop changing with a 1.0 version. So do you prefer stable software or not?

I don’t think that anything Zig related needs to be done for this? LLMs will spit out code from any language, no integration is needed, it’s just text to the machine. If anything Zig shouldn’t worry about LLMs and instead focus on creating readable code as usual, a feature you mentioned enjoying.

It sounds like you are worried about something but don’t know what, or are just trying to sell us on LLMs. I agree with you that I love Zig for it’s legibility, but I do not agree catering to LLMs in any way would advance the language in a good direction. Any focus of the language development itself is unrelated to, nor impacts LLM usage, so it would be frivolous any ways.

7

Timing has always been crucial during the major shifts in our industry. It happened at the right moment for C, at the right moment for Java, and now it is Rust’s moment. Without rushing things—assuming Zig’s release pace remains as it is (and I am certainly not asking for the work to be botched)—Zig will likely remain a niche language, though that may well be what the community desires.
Perhaps the real question is: what is needed to move faster? More donations?