Why Zig over C for Systems Programming

Zig offers practical advantages over C for systems programming, particularly in resource management where its `errdefer` keyword provides a cleaner alternative to C's goto-based cleanup patterns by placing deallocation logic directly after each allocation and automatically executing it in reverse order. The author, who favors C, argues that Zig maintains C's principles of being small, close to the machine, and compatible with C libraries, but eliminates specific pain points like error handling and resource cleanup that consume development time.