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zackoverflow
Personal blog · zackoverflow.devprogrammingsystems
zackoverflow is a personal blog at zackoverflow.dev about programming and systems. Since 2022, 34 different Hacker News readers have linked it 42 times, most often “When Zig Is Safer and Faster Than Rust”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-05-27, and you can follow it by feed.
Crafting elegant abstractions
Most-linked posts?
- When Zig Is Safer and Faster Than Rust14 people · 15 mentions · first linked 2023-03-07
- Zig vs. Rust in 20265 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2026-05-11
- I wrote a Flappy Bird game in TypeScript's type system3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2023-10-19
- Template Interpreters3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2025-11-12
- Why does tsgo use so much memory?3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2026-05-30
- I spent 181 minutes waiting for the Zig compiler this week2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2025-03-12
- /writing/unsafe-rust-vs-zig2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-02-05
What Hacker News says?
I haven't verified this, but I would be willing to bet that most of Bun's issues here have more to do with interfacing with JavaScriptCore through the C FFI than Zig itself. this is as much a problem in Rust as it is in Zig. in fact, it has been argued that writing unsafe Zig is safer than writing unsafe Rust: https://zackoverflow.dev/writing/unsafe-rust-vs-zig/
Comment linking /writing/unsafe-rust-vs-zig/
on “Anthropic acquires Bun”Submitted I'm making a Typescript type-checker in Rust as a story · 153 points
HN discussionIt's a bit that it is oversold, but it's a cute little VM. https://github.com/MichiganTypeScript/typescript-types-only-... Though the fact that the actual converter that converts from WASM to TypeScript types is in Rust makes it lose a bit of charm, but still. Like Flappy Bird in TypeScript types did: https://zackoverflow.dev/writing/flappy-bird-in-type-level-t...
Comment linking /writing/flappy-bird-in-type-level-typescript/
on “TypeScript types can run DOOM [video]”Submitted How often does Python allocate? as a story · 109 points
HN discussionI have heard different arguments, such as https://zackoverflow.dev/writing/unsafe-rust-vs-zig/ .
Comment linking /writing/unsafe-rust-vs-zig/
on “Rust in the kernel is no longer experimental”Submitted When Zig Is Safer and Faster Than Rust as a story · 108 points
HN discussionMiri is good, but it still has very significant large limitations. And the recommendation of using Miri is unlikely to apply to using similar tools for many other programming languages, given the state of UB in the Rust ecosystem, as recommended by https://materialize.com/blog/rust-concurrency-bug-unbounded-... https://zackoverflow.dev/writing/unsafe-rust-vs-zig >If you use a crate in your Rust program, Miri will al…
Comment linking /writing/unsafe-rust-vs-zig
on “Tree Borrows”Submitted I spent 181 minutes waiting for the Zig compiler this week as a story · 24 points
HN discussion(This is a reply to multiple sibling comments, not the parent) For those saying unsafe Rust is strictly safer than C, you're overlooking Rust's extremely strict invariants that users must uphold. These are much stricter than C, and they're extremely easy to accidentally break in unsafe Rust. Breaking them in unsafe Rust is instant UB, even before leaving the unsafe context. This article has a decent summary in this…
Comment linking /writing/unsafe-rust-vs-zig/
on “Low-Level Optimization with Zig”Submitted I spent 181 minutes waiting for the Zig compiler this week as a story · 11 points
HN discussionUnsafe Rust is problematic: https://zackoverflow.dev/writing/unsafe-rust-vs-zig See also: https://github.com/roc-lang/roc/blob/main/www/content/faq.md... Zig is not entirely unsafe. It provides quite a few compile time checks and primitives to catch memory leaks or prevent them altogether.
Comment linking /writing/unsafe-rust-vs-zig
on “Zig; what I think after months of using it”Submitted I spent 181 minutes waiting for the Zig compiler this week as a story · 9 points
HN discussionThis post makes a cogent argument that Rust's rules that are normally enforced by the compiler makes unsafe rust harder to write without UB than other languages that are not memory safe by default. https://zackoverflow.dev/writing/unsafe-rust-vs-zig/
Comment linking /writing/unsafe-rust-vs-zig/
on “Circle C++ with memory safety”Submitted I wrote a Flappy Bird game in TypeScript's type system as a story · 6 points
HN discussion> Additionally, I want to tyty to have better and more descriptive error messages than tsc's. Isn't this nice?: ( https://zackoverflow.dev/tyty-errors.jpeg ) Actually, no. It looks fancy, sure, but error messages aren't there to be pretty, but to be usable. 1. I expect the first line of an error to give me a succinct, yet precise description of the problem. Error: Incompatible types It would never be possible for me…
Comment linking /tyty-errors.jpeg
on “I'm making a Typescript type-checker in Rust”Submitted Zig vs. Rust in 2026 as a story · 4 points
HN discussionhttps://chadaustin.me/2024/10/intrusive-linked-list-in-rust/ HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41944121 While we at it, someone argued that Zig is nicer than unsafe Rust: https://zackoverflow.dev/writing/unsafe-rust-vs-zig/
Comment linking /writing/unsafe-rust-vs-zig/
on “Lessons learned from a successful Rust rewrite”Submitted Template Interpreters as a story · 4 points
HN discussionThere are few reasons: > Productivity > Readability > Performance > Static binaries > Not needing PhD in rust, especially async rust Rust works fine as high level language but it's absolutely awful for anything else and suffers from C++ feature creep. It would be a much better language if rust wasn't afraid of making `unsafe` an useful tool rather than thing that "everyone expect the core devs should absolutely avoi…
Comment linking /writing/unsafe-rust-vs-zig/
on “Press Release: Future Software Should Be Memory Safe”Submitted Zig vs. Rust in 2026 as a story · 3 points
HN discussionApparently unsafe zig can be faster, but only due to unsafe rust being difficult to write in the style of pointers: https://zackoverflow.dev/writing/unsafe-rust-vs-zig/
Comment linking /writing/unsafe-rust-vs-zig/
on “Zig is everything I want C to be”Submitted Zig vs. Rust in 2026 as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSo, this is unhelpful and makes me think very little of you. Your other post is better so I'll reply to that. I will note that I almost certainly know more than you, so any sort of "you don't know what you're talking about" will be lost on my deaf ears. Given my experience, you should question your own position, as, empirically, I have demonstrated expertise on this topic. The fact that you won't make points but ins…
Comment linking /writing/unsafe-rust-vs-zig/
on “Zero-day CSS: CVE-2026-2441 exists in the wild”Submitted Zig vs. Rust in 2026 as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSorry, but if he or you read and understood that link I gave (and it is not a long link, and it is interesting in my opinion), it would be quite clear. If he boldly comes with false statements about basics, then he cannot be said to be engaging in good faith debate. Especially considering the errors he makes regarding basic logic. However, I can at least give you a hint: If you have a block of unsafe, is it sufficie…
Comment linking /writing/unsafe-rust-vs-zig/
on “Zero-day CSS: CVE-2026-2441 exists in the wild”Submitted Template Interpreters as a story · 3 points
HN discussionWhat's more important the amount of `unsafe` is if it's sound `unsafe` . The problem with `unsafe` is that it's even harder to write correctly than it is to write sound C/C++/Zig/etc. The thing about Undefined Behavior is that it gives the compiler free reins to introduce bugs anywhere in the program , safe or `unsafe`, and the thing about Rust is that it has much stricter rules about what is well-defined than most…
Comment linking /writing/unsafe-rust-vs-zig/
on “First Rust code shows up in the Windows 11 kernel”Submitted Flappy Bird Implemented in TypeScript Types as a story · 3 points
HN discussionThe people who originally worked on Bun themselves would disagree with your point (but their situation was based on the premise that they did not take the steps required to leverage incremental compilation): https://zackoverflow.dev/writing/i-spent-181-minutes-waiting... And, unrelated to Bun, I too would disagree. You don't want to have to wait minutes for a build to complete before you can run the test suite, or e…
Comment linking /writing/i-spent-181-minutes-waiting-for-the-zig-compiler-this-week
on “Buz – A fork of Bun using modern Zig, with sub-1s incremental builds”Submitted Why does tsgo use so much memory? as a story · 2 points
HN discussion
