Hanselminutes with Scott Hanselman Loris Cro on the Rise of Zig
Dec 25, 2025
Loris Cro, VP of Community at the Zig Software Foundation, shares his journey from bioinformatics to the world of Zig, a rising star in systems programming. They delve into Zig's fresh approach to simplicity and explicitness, contrasting it with the complexities of C/C++. Loris discusses Zig's memory safety, cross-compilation advantages, and innovative comptime capabilities. He highlights case studies like Bun and TigerBeetle, showcasing Zig's real-world impact and its mission to make systems programming more accessible. A conversation about the future of development awaits!
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Header Include Order Bit The Bindings
- Loris recounts debugging OpenCV C++ bindings that failed due to a header included inside an extern C block.
- The issue only surfaced in Zig because the Go build had accidentally masked the mistake via include order.
Legacy C Complexity Repels Newcomers
- C and C++ accumulate rough corners over decades, creating a high barrier to entry for newcomers.
- Zig aims to be a modern, cleaner C-like alternative with fewer hidden behaviors.
Control And Explicitness Over Safety Focus
- Zig emphasizes control, explicitness, and interoperability with existing C/C++ code.
- This philosophy contrasts with Rust's primary emphasis on memory safety and strong compiler guarantees.