WIN32 APIs & Zigmod + Aquila ⚡ Zig SHOWTIME #24

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We're back to tech talks in this episode!

If you haven't heard, Handmade Seattle is going to be a hybrid conference (in-person + live streaming and chat) and the early bird ticket sale has opened. It's going to be on November 11-12 in Seattle and I've optimistically bought a full ticket. I've been toying with the idea of showing up with a camera and an interview microphone to cause some chaos, and I'm now at the point where getting the logistics right is one determining factor. For now I've preordered a portable 32bit float recorder (it's a recorder where you don't have to set the gain right upfont: it never clips and adding gain doesn't raise the noise floor, pretty cool tech), since the esimated delivery date is October. I'll think more about what else to pack as we get closer to the date. I know that I made fun of vloggers in one of the first videos on the youtube channel, but I think this might turn out to be legitimately good content.

If you have suggestions, let me know. You can get a ticket for the conference here: https://www.handmade-seattle.com/

New Episode

Showing Zig how to see through Bill Gate's Windows

By Jonathan Marler

Microsoft recently released structured defition of all the WIN32 APIs that Windows exposes. By using that information languages can create bindings via codegen, and so now you know who to thank for the Zig bindings!

We're even listed on the official README maintained by Microsoft!

Thoughts on robust package management with Zigmod and Aquila

By Meghan Denny

From Meghan's own words:
The package management space is filled with programs seldom loved by developers. It is a space that is critical to get right to uphold robust and reusable parts of Zig's promise of helping deliver optimal software. Here I talk about where I think some other package managers go wrong, where I think Zig can improve, and how to use software today that implements these ideas if you'd like to try them out or help improve on them.

https://github.com/nektro/zigmod
https://github.com/nektro/aquila
https://aquila.red

Last Episode

Here’s a recap of the talks in the last episode, in case you missed it. The full episode is available on YouTube.

The Community Backstage (YouTube Link)

With Jonathan Turner

Older cooking shows, after showing how to prepare a dish, used to end by pulling out of the counter a pre-made version of the plate. Nowadays YouTube cooking channels don't do that anymore, but they still don't show the full story of how the sausage gets made. Sometimes you see a bag of flour fall on the ground and burst open, but you never see the full, uncut, painful cleanup process. You never see the youtuber place the camera and check if the angle is good enough.

This is what we want to talk about when it comes to building communities: what happens behind the scenes that you can't normally observe.

Roc Solid Platforms in Zig (YouTube Link)

By Lucas

From Lucas' own words:
Roc is a language inspired by Elm built using Rust, LLVM, reference counting, and in place mutations. The language has immutability but the compiler is smart enough to flag uniquely referenced data as safe to mutate in place. This allows for significant speed ups while maintaining a high-level pure functional interface. Another unique aspect of Roc is that the standard library has zero IO. In order to use IO in your Roc applications, you need to depend on a platform which is generally written in Rust or Zig. We will explore what creating a simple platform for Roc using Zig looks like.

See you at showtime,
Loris Cro