⚡zap⚡ - Blazingly Fast Backends in Zig

In this talk, I am going to showcase my zig project "zap" as the result of my quest to find a performant approach to using zig for developing robust and super fast REST API backends.

Instead of writing the HTTP server part in GO and the logic in zig and, by doing so, turning everything into a GO project build-wise, I opted for zig-wrapping an existing, battle-tested C microframework for web applications (facil.io). Now, I can happily remain in zig land. 😊

So far, zap has beaten everything I tested it against, performance-wise, in simple, basic HTTP server tests, e.g., a simple zap HTTP server yields 30% higher requests/sec on my PC than a simple GO HTTP server.

The talk will lead to a live (SYCL 😊) survey demo with a questionnaire app written in zig zap plus a small pure JavaScript frontend that communicates with the REST API.

With this talk, I also want to encourage everybody to start an open-source zig project to be able to use zig at work.