C++ adds more high-level conveniences without actually removing the footguns and undefined behavior (much C code compiles in a C++ compiler).
Zig tries to keep the low-level C philosophy but have things more well factored and well defined. The result is you _can_ tinker in high-level code, yet "drop down" into low-level code as you desire.
(Compared to rust, you get fewer compiler-enforced guarantees, but unlike C the language isn't trying to make high-level code adversarial).
I haven't really used modern C, not sure if it's evolved as much as modern C++, which I feel is a joy to use, and a lot safer. But then I've been writing C++ for decades.
I feel like C evolved from basically syntax sugar for assembly, so that's where all the footguns come from, rather than being actually adversarial.
For some reason this always brings to mind that moment in Red Dwarf where Kryten, devoid of his behavioural chip, deems it appropriate to serve roast human to his crewmates. "If you eat chicken, obviously you'd eat your own species as well, otherwise you'd just be picking on the chickens!"
It's arguably the closest modern language (with a sizeable community) to the Wirthian languages.
There is Swift as well, although quite far from Wirthian compile times.
I've been places, from embedded bare metal to ML AI, and that "embedded bare metal" end is the one place I don't use Python directly in. Embedded bare metal is just ruled by C forever.
Bit of a shame, because C is kind of bad at its job, but nothing else has the "compatible with everything" badge of honor.
The tooling around embedded devices though? Python.
If you only ever think of tinkering for the purpose of execution speed ninjutsu, isn't it your definition of tinkering that's far too narrow?
I personally think the optimization challenge is fun. I like digging in to low level stuff, reviewing the assembly dumps and processor pipeline architectures. I fail or give up most of the time, but I enjoy learning in the process.
I’m just trying to show how Zig fits my tinkering well, since you said you can’t see how Zig would ever be a good fit for tinkering. I’m not saying it’s a good fit for all forms of tinkering.
what the heck has convinced you that logic is somehow flawed in a new low-level language? LOLLL