I'll make a list of the things that both languages have in common that make them feel similar to me:
- structs and functions are the main means of composition
- the pattern of: allocate resource, immediately defer deallocating the resource
- errors are values, handled very similarly (multiple return values vs error unions)
- built in json <-> struct support
- especially with the 0.16.0 Io changes in Zig, the concurrency story (std.Io.async[0] is equivalent to the go keyword[1], std.Io.Queue[2] is equivalent to channels[3], std.Io.select[4] is equivalent to the select keyword[5])
- batteries included but not sprawling stdlib
- git based dependencies
- built in testing
[1] https://go.dev/tour/concurrency/1
[2] https://ziglang.org/documentation/master/std/#std.Io.Queue
[3] https://go.dev/tour/concurrency/2
[4] https://ziglang.org/documentation/master/std/#std.Io.select
[5] https://go.dev/tour/concurrency/5