Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

”Zig builds C faster than most C compilers” is a nonsense statement, which I don’t know how to answer.

The fact is simply that despite Zig uses LLVM as a backend in the same way Odin and C3 does, it compiles much slower. Exactly why that is, is something I can only guess at, but the fact is that Zig cached is still much slower to compile than Odin or C3.

(There are a few possible candidates as to why this is so that I identified and can share if it is interesting)

In any case, Zig is only ”fast to compile” if you compare to the triad of infamously slow languages: Swift, C++ and Rust.

Anything else is just hype.



It sure would be nice to have some concrete numbers from those projects to compare to for example ...

Note the discussion about "Incremental Build (libghostty-vt)" https://mitchellh.com/writing/zig-builds-getting-faster

https://biggo.com/news/202506090712_Zig_x86_Backend_Performa...


Embergen is 400kloc Odin, it compiles in about 2s. No incremental compilation or caching to speed it up.

And this is with LLVM as backend.


Thanks for the data point.




Consider applying for YC's Summer 2026 batch! Applications are open till May 4

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: