Posted on Oct 8

Start Low-Level Programming: Why Zig Teaches Better, C++ Pays Better

#cpp #tutorial #beginners #webdev

Want to become a low-level programmer but don’t know where to start? I’ll make it simple for you.

You really only need to think about two kinds of languages:

Highly transferable languages
Commercial juggernauts

TL;DR:

If you’re programming for fun or for learning’s sake → pick a highly transferable language (e.g Zig; I'll explain why.).
If your main goal is to get paid → pick a commercial juggernaut (like C++).

But what do I mean by highly transferable and commercial juggernaut?

Highly Transferable

Transferability is the idea that once you learn a concept properly, you start seeing it everywhere. It’s learning from first principles.

Every language has some transferability, but some sit way higher on the spectrum. And for me, that spectrum boils down to one claim:

If you learn to represent anything in memory, you can build almost anything.

Think about it: everything you’ll ever program is just a representation in memory.

An image? Just a long uint8_t array.
A video? A sequence of images (uint8_t arrays).
Audio? Sample buffers of integers or floats.
A buffer itself? The fundamental unit of low-level memory.

If you can truly learn how to represent and manipulate raw memory, you become unstoppable.

And that’s exactly where Zig shines. Zig gives you lower-level control with a high-level feel. Once you get comfortable in Zig, C++ starts to feel like an even higher-level language. Every lesson you learn in Zig transfers to everything else, because at the end of the day, everything is data.

Why not Rust? Rust prioritizes safety over raw memory manipulation. You're always fighting the borrow checker instead of learning memory fundamentals directly.

It’s fantastic when memory safety is paramount, but it obscures the fundamentals. Rust teaches you to play safely in the sandbox. Zig (or C) hands you the gun and lets you shoot yourself in the foot. Painful, yes, but unforgettable.

So, if you want to get into low-level programming for fun or to truly master fundamentals, start with Zig. If not Zig, then at least C. Bonus: Zig’s tooling is amazing. Even C interop on Windows 'just works,' which honestly feels impossible given how painful that usually is.

Commercial Juggernaut

Now let’s talk money.

A commercial juggernaut is simply a language that reliably makes people money. It’s the one closest to consumers, closest to where commerce happens. Sure, technically any language can make money, but some are natural at it.

Believe it or not, JavaScript is probably the ultimate commercial language right now. It’s everywhere:

Web
Mobile apps (React Native)
Desktop apps (Slack, VSCode, etc.)
Games
Even runtimes (WASM, Node.js)

But if you want to go low-level, the commercial juggernaut is C++.

Why?

C++ gives you high-level abstractions with insane speed.
It’s tied to the gaming industry, the biggest engines (Unreal, Godot, etc.) are C++.
It’s all over embedded systems.
And my favorite: Node.js is powered by C++ under the hood.

That means if you learn C++, you can:

Write Node.js plugins developers can pay for.
Contribute to the V8 JavaScript engine.
Get noticed in one of the most commercial ecosystems out there.

Right now, if you look at scratch-made game devlogs, most of them are in C++. Love it or hate it, C++ is the commercial juggernaut, it’s the commercial juggernaut of low-level programming.

Do Zig, C, or Rust make money? Absolutely. It's just harder.

Wrapping Up

So depending on your goals:

Zig (or C) → teaches you timeless, transferable lessons about memory and fundamentals.
C++ → plugs you straight into commerce, games, and industry demand.

If you’re chasing fundamentals, build that Zig game engine from scratch and post it. As for C++, some companies will pay you good money for it.