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Notes -
It doesn't help that Rust is actually a good language (though I won't pretend it's perfect) while still enabling C/C++ levels of performance. Wokes got in on the ground floor of what is likely the future of systems programming. I mean it's possible something like Zig could win in the long run but given the Linux kernel adopting Rust and Microsoft beginning to use it for important parts of Windows it's hard to see it losing with that kind of momentum.
But even alternatives like Zig are going to attract plenty of weirdos. Interest in low level computing and being a weirdo seem to go hand in hand, just look at how 90% or more of prominent emulator developers seem to be trans and/or furries. Even the more normal ones are still massive weebs.
Zig died to me when the lead developer came out with a declaration of intent to ban (full-fledged) recursion or at least discourage it using cumbersome syntax (the proposal appears to have been shelved, but only with a "we'll come for you eventually when the time and Overton Window are ripe" note). Every modern language seems to have at least some domain in which the programmer is deliberately hobbled in the name of "safety"/his betters' strongly-held opinions about what he should and shouldn't do.
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