Zig: Zero to Hero
From Fundamentals to Production
From Fundamentals to Production — A comprehensive guide to Zig development focused on idioms and best practices for Zig 0.15.2.
0.1 About This Guide
This guide teaches modern Zig idioms and best practices using Zig 0.15.2 — the latest stable version at time of writing. All code examples and runnable programs target this version.
Working with Zig 0.14.1? - See Appendix A for quick-reference patterns showing 0.14 equivalents - See Appendix B for the full migration guide (0.14 → 0.15) - Recommended: Upgrade to 0.15.2 first (typical migration: 2-4 hours)
Who This Guide Is For: - Systems programmers learning Zig from C, C++, or Rust backgrounds - Developers building Zig applications with modern Zig - Teams evaluating Zig for production use - Contributors to Zig open-source projects
This guide assumes: - Prior systems programming experience - Familiarity with basic programming concepts - Understanding of memory management principles
0.2 What You’ll Learn
This guide covers 15 comprehensive chapters spanning:
- Foundations: Language idioms, memory management, and core patterns
- Data & I/O: Collections, containers, streams, and formatting
- Error Handling: Error sets, cleanup strategies, and resource management
- Concurrency: Async patterns, threading, and performance optimization
- Build System: build.zig, packages, dependencies, and cross-compilation
- Interoperability: Working with C, C++, WASI, and WebAssembly
- Quality: Testing, benchmarking, profiling, and diagnostics
- Migration: Practical guide for upgrading from 0.14.x to 0.15.x
0.3 Code Examples
All code examples are runnable and tested. You can find the complete source code examples in the GitHub repository.
Ready to get started? Head to Chapter 1: Quick Start or choose a specific chapter from the navigation menu.