# Zig Zag

> Andrew Kelley is the creator of the Zig programming language and president of the Zig Software Foundation, a 501(c)(3) non-profit he founded in 2020. In 2018, he walked away from a senior engineering role at OkCupid to work on Zig full-time on donations alone - a bet that has since attracted $512,000+ in corporate pledges, spawned production-grade projects like Bun and TigerBeetle, and built one of the most passionate communities in systems programming. He writes the 'Zig Zag' newsletter covering Zig and systems programming.

- **Role:** President and Lead Developer at Zig Software Foundation
- **Organizations:** Zig Software Foundation, OkCupid (former)
- **Nationality:** American
- **Known for:** Created the Zig programming language, a modern alternative to C, Founded Zig Software Foundation as a 501(c)(3) non-profit in 2020, Secured $512,000 in pledges from Synadia Communications and TigerBeetle

## Career timeline

- **2015** — Designed and first announced the Zig programming language
- **2018** — Quit senior backend engineering role at OkCupid to work on Zig full-time on donations
- **2020** — Founded the Zig Software Foundation, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization
- **2023** — Left Twitter and Reddit, moved to Mastodon and Ziggit forum
- **2024** — Zig achieved record GitHub engagement; Synadia and TigerBeetle pledged $512,000 to ZSF
- **2025** — Migrated Zig from GitHub to Codeberg; x86_64 self-hosted compiler backend enabled by default

## Achievements

- Created the Zig programming language, a modern alternative to C
- Founded Zig Software Foundation as a 501(c)(3) non-profit in 2020
- Secured $512,000 in pledges from Synadia Communications and TigerBeetle
- Built a compiler that builds itself in under 10 seconds
- Grew a community that powers production projects like Bun (JavaScript runtime) and TigerBeetle (financial database)
- Pioneered comptime (compile-time code execution) as a core language feature over expert skepticism
- Delivered 5-50% wall-clock improvements in the x86_64 self-hosted backend
- Built 30+ blog posts and gave 12+ technical talks since 2018
- Developed Groove Basin music player and multiple browser-playable games

## Latest updates

- **2025-01** — Published 'What to Expect from Release Month' outlining Zig's release roadmap
- **2025-02** — Announced donor bounty for macOS linker improvements
- **2025-03** — Published 2025 Financial Report and Fundraiser for Zig Software Foundation
- **2025-04** — x86_64 self-hosted backend enabled by default for Debug builds on Linux and macOS
- **2025-11** — Announced migration of Zig project from GitHub to Codeberg

## Links

- Website: https://andrewkelley.me/
- GitHub: https://github.com/andrewrk

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/zig-zag
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-04-16