My first Zig Day
I just got back from my first “Zig Day”, which happened to also be Portland’s inaugural.
We started the day with a quick mingle. We then briefly formed a circle to introduce ourselves and say what project we had brought with us, or what we were hoping to learn. We then broke out organically into groups, coded all day, went out to lunch, came back, coded some more, and finally, shared what we had done all day.
While there, I met a student from DigiPen who drove down from Seattle to visit their buddy in Portland. They were both excited to learn about the event, and that it coincided with the trip. We worked through bindings for CLAP, an open protocol for building audio plugins for Digital Audio Workstations. This is something I’ve always wanted to get into, and for whatever reason, just never did. Thanks to them, I have a new hobby.
I talked to someone who was working on their command line Markdown parser and renderer. It was their first Zig project, coming from a tenured career using C++. We were both excited to talk about what Zig did differently that inspired us. They demoed their project to me, and it was my first time seeing Kitty’s terminal graphics protocol in action. Thanks to them, I felt like I took a step toward the future.
While they got help from someone to debug an edge case, I spoke with a hardware engineer who had come to work on their serialization code for some kind of compression tool they had been developing. They had expressed an interest in flexible array members in Zig, a concept I have recently become quite familiar with. Thanks to them, I was able to work through a real world use-case for software I had written with someone who I respect.
The day was simple. There were no sponsors, and there were no recruiters. We were not expected to consume, and we were not expected to produce. The only expectation of any one of us was to connect with each other. We were people gathering in our community library to share this thing we love.
This low key, palpably genuine vibe did not happen by accident.
The format of the event, outlined by Loris Cro last year in a blog post, follows the format of a meetup that he had attended called “Open Source Saturday”. As the VP of Community at the Zig Software Foundation, Loris proposed that members of the Zig community start a regular “Zig Day” in their own cities following a similar format. Andrew Kelley, president of ZSF and the original creator of the language, put this particular instance of the event together in his hometown of Portland – not just to lead by example – but also, because it’s exactly the kind of thing that he wants to attend.
This is the thing about Zig, and the community that is building around it, that has had the most lasting impact on me. There’s a genuine belief in a better way to do things. There’s a deep rooted curiosity. There’s a respect for the humanity involved in software development. And, most importantly, there’s follow-through. Today, in my eyes, was the physical manifestation of all of these things.
These are not technical merits. They will not appear on benchmarks or feature lists. They are not quantifiable in any way, whatsoever. They are subtle, but I find them pervasive. Something about this community surrounding this particular language brings me back the joy I felt when I first began my path on this career.
I have been asked to take over organizing future Zig Day events in Portland. The cadence in which we will hold them has not yet been determined. Given the commitment involved – a full Saturday – we think every other month might be suitable.
If you attended today, I would love to hear your feedback. If you live nearby but were unable to attend, we look forward to seeing you at the next one. Subscribe on zig.day to be notified of future events.
If you do not live near us and would like to attend a Zig Day in your city, you can check if there is one being organized. If there is not, it is quite manageable to organize your own. You’ll be glad you did. Promise.