Reflecting on a Year of Gamedev in Zig

a year ago

The author reflects on one year of game development in Zig, sharing insights applicable beyond gamedev.
The Zig Discord community is highly responsive, solving both beginner and intermediate-level problems quickly.
An example problem with CPU instruction sets was resolved swiftly thanks to the Zig Discord.
Zig has built-in support for vectors, optimizing operations with SIMD instructions, but lacks built-in matrix support.
The Zig build system is praised for being clearer and more manageable compared to CMake, Ninja, and Meson.
The standard library in Zig is still incomplete, requiring occasional workarounds for missing features.
Zig's compiler undergoes significant, breaking changes regularly, but updates are manageable and bring improvements.
Compile times have improved with each release, and future updates promise even faster debug builds.
The introduction of the --watch compile option enhances developer workflow by automatically recompiling on file changes.
Despite some challenges, the author is positive about Zig's future and continues developing their game in the language.

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