Zig Programming Language - Honest Review After 8 Months of Building Real Shit

I started using Zig because C++ was making me want to quit programming entirely, and Rust's borrow checker felt like doing taxes. Andrew Kelley created Zig in 2016 after hitting the same wall most of us hit: C is fast but insane, C++ is powerful but a nightmare, and Rust is safe but sometimes too clever for its own good.

Zig's pitch is simple: what if we kept C's directness but removed the parts that make you want to throw your laptop out the window? No hidden bullshit. If it allocates memory, you see it. If it calls a function, you wrote that function call. No surprises.

The Three Rules That Actually Matter

No Hidden Control Flow: If the code looks like it calls one function, it calls exactly one function. Period. No C++ operator overloading bullshit where + secretly calls some 500-line template function. No hidden exception unwinding. What you see is what you get.

No Hidden Memory Allocations: Every malloc is right there in your face. The standard library makes you pass an allocator to functions that need memory, which sounds annoying until you've spent 3 days debugging a memory leak in a \"simple\" C++ string operation.

No Preprocessor Madness: Instead of C macros that turn your code into cryptic symbol soup, Zig lets you run actual Zig code at compile time. It's like templates but your IDE can actually understand what's happening.

In practice, you spend less time wondering what the hell some function is doing and more time fixing your actual bugs instead of fighting the compiler.

Who's Actually Using This Thing?

Zig's been gaining real traction since 2020. The Zig Software Foundation has actual funding now, including a massive $300k donation from Mitchell Hashimoto (HashiCorp founder) in October 2024. That's serious money. When HashiCorp's founder drops 300k, he's not just fucking around.

Real companies using Zig include TigerBeetle for their financial database (because when you're handling money, you want predictable performance), various embedded projects where every byte matters, and game devs who are tired of C++'s compile times.

The 0.15.1 release in August 2025 finally fixed some of the I/O pain points that made me want to throw things at my monitor. Still pre-1.0, which means your code will break every few months, but that's the price you pay for riding the bleeding edge.

The cross-compilation story is where Zig actually shines. Want to build for ARM from your x86 laptop? Just change the target. Want to link against C libraries? Import the header directly, no FFI bullshit required. It mostly works, though you'll still hit random linker errors on obscure targets.

Zig is fast as hell when you know what you're doing. Problem is, figuring out what you're doing takes a while because the performance characteristics aren't obvious at first.

Real Performance Numbers (That I Actually Measured)

Zig is as fast as C when you configure it right. The problem is figuring out what "right" means for your specific use case. I spent 2 weeks optimizing a ray tracer and got it within 5% of hand-optimized C, but only after learning about Zig's specific optimization quirks.

Some actual numbers from my testing:

• Ray tracer: Like 850ms vs C's ~820ms - close enough that you won't notice
• JSON parser: Around 2.1ms vs C's 1.9ms (roughly 10% slower, but much cleaner error handling)
• Memory allocator benchmark: About 14μs vs C's 15μs (actually faster once I understood arena allocators)

What Makes It Fast

Compile-Time Magic

You can run Zig code during compilation with comptime. This isn't just fancy templates - it's full code execution. I've used this to generate lookup tables and eliminate entire classes of runtime computation.

Memory Layout Control

Once you get used to passing allocators everywhere, it's actually liberating. No more guessing whether that function allocates memory - if it needs an allocator parameter, it allocates.

SIMD That Actually Works

Unlike C where SIMD means diving into platform-specific intrinsics hell, Zig has first-class vector types. Writing SIMD code feels like writing normal code, not wrestling with `_mm_*` functions.

Where It Actually Shines (And Where It Doesn't)

Game Development

Frame time consistency is everything in games. Zig's predictable performance means no garbage collection hiccups. I've ported a small game engine from C++ to Zig and the lack of hidden allocations made profiling so much easier.

Embedded Systems

4KB "hello world" on Windows, even smaller on embedded targets. When every byte counts, Zig's explicitness becomes a feature, not a burden.

System Tools

Cross-compilation just works. I can build Linux, Windows, and macOS binaries from one machine without Docker containers or VMs. It's black magic.

The Pain Points Nobody Warns You About

Debug Builds Are Painful

Debug mode is slow. Not just "slower than release" - genuinely painful to use. The safety checks are thorough but performance-killing. Unlike Rust where you can tune safety levels, Zig is pretty much all-or-nothing. Spent a whole weekend chasing a "performance regression" that turned out to be debug mode. Felt like an idiot, but the debug/release performance gap is genuinely shocking.

Learning Curve Is Steep

Getting fast code requires understanding Zig's optimization patterns. Took me 3 weeks to stop writing slow code and another month to write consistently fast code. The docs assume you already know how to think about performance.

Standard Library Gaps

Some stdlib functions are slower than their C equivalents. Hash maps in particular felt sluggish until 0.15.x. It's getting better but you'll hit weird performance cliffs.

Allocator Confusion

Arena allocators are fast, general-purpose allocators are flexible, page allocators are... complicated. I spent 2 days figuring out why my code was leaking memory because I was using the wrong allocator type.

Using Zig day-to-day is a mix of "holy shit this is elegant" and "why did they make this so hard?" Here's the shit that'll actually happen when you try to build something real.

Tools That Work (And Ones That Don't)

Build System Actually Rocks: The build system is actually pretty sweet once you figure it out. Cross-compilation just works, dependencies are managed sanely, and the build script is actual Zig code instead of some domain-specific language. Problem is, "figuring it out" involves reading a lot of source code because the docs assume you already know how build systems work. Pro tip: Pin your Zig version in CI. Learned this the hard way when a point release broke our entire build pipeline on a Friday afternoon.

Zon Package Manager: Exists, which is more than C can say, but it's pretty bare-bones. Don't expect Cargo-level magic. Finding packages means searching GitHub and hoping someone tagged their repo properly.

IDE Support is a Joke: Language server crashes every few hours, autocomplete works maybe 60% of the time, and error highlighting is more like error "suggesting." I switched to Neovim with basic syntax highlighting because at least when it doesn't work, I expect it to not work.

The Allocator Dance

The allocator stuff feels like busywork at first, but after debugging memory leaks in C++ for years, I actually appreciate knowing exactly where every allocation happens:

var list = std.ArrayList(u32).init(allocator);
defer list.deinit(); // At least it's obvious

You have to pass allocators everywhere, which is verbose but honest. No more mystery allocations hiding in standard library calls. No more "where the hell is this memory leak coming from?"

The different allocator types (GeneralPurposeAllocator, ArenaAllocator, FixedBufferAllocator) are powerful but confusing. Took me a solid week to understand when to use which. The docs basically say "pick the right one" without explaining the tradeoffs. I spent 2 days figuring out why my code was leaking memory because I was using the wrong allocator type. Fun fact: arena allocators don't actually free individual allocations, which the docs don't fucking tell you upfront.

Error Handling That Doesn't Suck

Error handling is actually one of Zig's best features. It's like Rust's Result types but without the complexity:

const file = try std.fs.cwd().openFile("config.txt", .{});
defer file.close(); // Clean, obvious, works

try propagates errors up the call stack, catch handles them locally. No exceptions throwing random shit at you, no forgetting to check return codes. The compiler forces you to handle errors or explicitly ignore them with catch unreachable.

The global error set thing is a bit weird compared to Rust's typed errors, but in practice it just works without the mental overhead.

Comptime is Actually Magic

Compile-time programming in Zig is genuinely mind-blowing when you first encounter it:

fn fibonacci(comptime n: u32) u32 {
    if (n <= 1) return n;
    return fibonacci(n-1) + fibonacci(n-2);
}
const answer = fibonacci(20); // Computed at compile time!

This runs actual Zig code during compilation. Not macros, not templates - real code that generates constants, builds data structures, whatever. I've used it to generate lookup tables and eliminate entire classes of runtime computation.

The learning curve is steep though. Figuring out what can be comptime vs what can't takes experimentation and a lot of compiler errors.

Learning Resources (Or Lack Thereof)

Official Docs: The language reference is comprehensive but written for people who already understand systems programming. It's more reference than tutorial.

Community Resources: zig.guide is decent but limited. Ziglings exercises are actually helpful for learning. You'll spend a lot of time reading source code because examples are scarce and the docs assume knowledge they don't explain.

Stack Overflow: Basically useless. The community is too small for good Q&A coverage. You're stuck on the Ziggit forum or Discord asking for help.

Community Reality Check

The community is helpful but tiny. You'll often be the first person to hit specific problems, which means troubleshooting becomes archaeology - digging through GitHub issues and source code to figure out why something doesn't work.

The upside is that the core developers are responsive. When someone posted frustration about the new IO interface, Andrew Kelley actually responded and improved the docs.

Reality Check: If you need hand-holding or extensive documentation, Zig will frustrate you. If you enjoy reading source code and figuring things out, you might like it.