OK, so, #Zig language 'has breaking changes in most versions'. A project (of someone else's) that is only six months old no longer builds.

There's a lot that I like about the language, if it was stable it would definitely be a good choice; but I don't think it is something I can use to build a long term project yet.

I really dislike C, but, it works, it's stable, all the tooling is 30+ years old, it isn't going to change much.

Or I could just pick one Zig version and never upgrade...

@simon_brooke How about Pascal?
@veer66 H'mmmmm... It was 1982 I last wrote #Pascal. I wonder... Yes, it has unions... Free Pascal allows packed structures... It *could* work.