Comptime as Configuration

Zig doesn't have an interface keyword or some simple way to create interfaces. Nonetheless, types like std.mem.Allocator and std.Random are often cited as examples that, with a bit of elbow grease, Zig offers every thing needed to create them. We've looked at Zig Interfaces in the past. If you want to understand how they work and how to write...

In an older post, we explored Zig's @ptrCast and then looked at a concrete usage in the shape of std.heap.MemoryPool. @ptrCast As a brief recap, when we use @ptrCast, we're telling the compiler to treat a pointer as a given type. For example, this code runs fine: const std = @import("std"); pub fn main() !void { var user = User{.power = 9001,...

Software developers are often evaluated based on how well they understand specific ideas and tools. While mastery is important, there's another type of knowledge I find myself relying on: vague awareness. Unlike mastery, awareness is merely knowing that something exists along with a basic understanding of what it is and what problem it can solve....

First, the code: std.mem.sort([]const u8, values, {}, stringLessThan); fn stringLessThan(_: void, lhs: []const u8, rhs: []const u8) bool { return std.mem.order(u8, lhs, rhs) == .lt; } std.mem.sort takes 4 arguments: the type of value we're sorting, the list of values to sort, an arbitrary context, and a function. The last argument, the...

If I asked you to respond to an HTTP request with a JSON serialize list of products, somewhere in your code, you'd probably have (or whatever the equivalent is in your stack): body, err := json.Marshal(products) There's an alternative to this approach that I'm rather fond of: gluing pre-serialized JSON pieces together: if (len(productJSON)) == 0...