zig-best-practices

Defining data structures and function signatures before implementation enforces type-driven design in Zig. This approach reduces runtime errors and prevents API ambiguity by establishing clear contracts early.

You validate invariants at comptime in Zig by defining explicit error sets and checking invalid configurations during compilation. This catches errors before runtime and documents failure modes clearly.

The best way to model domain types in Zig is using tagged unions and distinct domain types. This prevents mixing different concepts and enforces safer, type-driven domain modeling across the codebase.

Explicit error handling improves Zig library APIs by specifying exact error sets and defining clear API contracts. This documents failure modes explicitly and reduces ambiguity for users consuming the library.

You should not use comptime validation in Zig when configuration values are only known at runtime. Comptime checks require known values at compile time, so dynamic inputs necessitate runtime validation instead.