PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES

Zig core team member mlugg published the definitive deep-dive on how Zig's incremental compilation works - file pipeline, semantic analysis, dependency tracking, and a custom incremental linker. 244 HN points and a rare steveklabnik endorsement.

Richard Feldman's team rewrote the Roc compiler from Rust to Zig in 487 days. The memory safety numbers challenge assumptions, and the 35ms incremental rebuilds are real. Here's the full breakdown.

A Haskell Foundation board member explains why Scarf moved to Python after 7 years in production. The culprit: LLM-driven development made Haskell's compile times an unacceptable bottleneck.

Douglas Thain's Introduction to Compilers and Language Design is a free undergraduate textbook that walks you through building a real compiler from scratch - and HN developers are enthusiastic.

Java's most anticipated performance feature is finally landing. Value classes eliminate object identity overhead and enable dense memory layouts - here's what changes.