As someone who still thinks one should write C (so as a completely uncool person), what I like about Zig is that it is no-nonsense language that just makes everything work as it is supposed to be without unnecessary complications, D is similar, except that it fell into the trap of adding to many features.

So, no, I do not really see anything fundamentally new either. But to me this is the appealing part. Syntax is ok (at least compared to Rust or C++).

Having said this, I am still skeptical about comptime for various reasons.