It tends to break down along the same lines as the C vs. C++ debate from 15 years ago.
People who are willing to accept a lot of complexity in order to solve certain problems or gain expressiveness tend to prefer Rust. It's a complex language with a rough learning curve and not-great compile times, but it does help solve some really difficult problems.
People who prefer simpler, more straightforwards languages (like C and Go) tend to prefer Zig. The core of the language is much smaller and more C-like, the (new) compiler is really fast and uses less memory in comparison to Rust or C++. The selection of features it does provide is very tasteful and clever in a way that has been really impressive. They do a huge amount with very little.
e.g.
* macros are avoided entirely by using compile time code evaluation and dead code elimination
* "generics" are implemented by using types as function arguments (no special syntax to learn) and compile time code evaluation
People who are willing to accept a lot of complexity in order to solve certain problems or gain expressiveness tend to prefer Rust. It's a complex language with a rough learning curve and not-great compile times, but it does help solve some really difficult problems.
People who prefer simpler, more straightforwards languages (like C and Go) tend to prefer Zig. The core of the language is much smaller and more C-like, the (new) compiler is really fast and uses less memory in comparison to Rust or C++. The selection of features it does provide is very tasteful and clever in a way that has been really impressive. They do a huge amount with very little.
e.g.
* macros are avoided entirely by using compile time code evaluation and dead code elimination
* "generics" are implemented by using types as function arguments (no special syntax to learn) and compile time code evaluation