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samatman | 11 months ago

This blog post is disqualified from any serious discussion, because it doesn't know the distinction between templates, which Zig's comptime constructs are not, and partial evaluation with reified types, which Zig's comptime constructs are.

It's not possible to make a positive contribution after a mistake that basic.

Here's an example of someone getting the design space correct, and therefore contributing to the discussion in a positive way. He doesn't end up liking Zig, for reasons I disagree with, but he does completely evade being not-even-wrong, which is table stakes.

https://hirrolot.github.io/posts/why-static-languages-suffer...

discuss

order

Ygg2|11 months ago

> This blog post is disqualified from any serious discussion, because it doesn't know the distinction between templates

Just because a blog doesn't go full type theory doesn't disqualify it from drawing conclusions based on experience and limitations incurred during actual use.

Something can be very well typed but still suck to use.

Intution doesn't need to be based on formal understanding. See Table of elements. Created by grouping elements by behavior, it turned out to be based on electron orbital configuration.

samatman|11 months ago

The central claim is that Zig's use of comptime is similar enough to templates to conflate them. That's simply incorrect. There's no value in trying to extract information from something which makes such a basic mistake as that, it doesn't contribute to a discussion, it distracts that discussion down a blind alley.