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The Zig project's rationale for their anti-AI contribution policy

simonwillison.net

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Re: The Zig project's rationale for their anti-AI contribution policy

#371

Post by miyoji »

WarmWash wrote: post #295
discreteevent wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's the complete fanbase. However, there are lots of people in the world who live their whole life by vibing. It's a viable way to live and sometimes it's the only way to live. But they have a very loose relationship with truth and reason. Programming was a domain that filtered out those people because they found it hard to succeed at it. LLM's have changed that and it's a huge problem. It's hard to kn…

Tangential side story, but an interesting one none the less. I was a food delivery driver back in the mid 00's to the mid teens. Early on, GPS was rare and expensive, so to do deliveries and do them effectively, you had to be able to read a map and mentally plan out efficient routes from the stochastic flow of orders coming out. This acted as a natural filter, and "delivery driver" tended to be an interesting class o…

> That being said, I'm not sure end users noticed much difference.

I have friends who order a lot of DoorDash and UberEats and they complain constantly about how awful the delivery service is.

The problem isn't that they haven't noticed, it's that they keep paying for the terrible service, even as the price goes up.

Re: The Zig project's rationale for their anti-AI contribution policy

#372

Post by em-bee »

ModernMech wrote: post #351
em-bee wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if they had a good track record, the current submission that led to this article damaged it. i am reminded of this quote: it takes more cleverness to debug code than it takes to write it. if you write code as clever as you can, by definition you are not clever enough to debug it. using LLM makes your code many times more clever than what you could write yourself. which means by the same definition the code is to clev…

I like the new corollary to that rule, which is that if the AI is the best coder in the room and writes code too clever for itself, then no one including the AI can debug the code. Then where does that leave you?

i love it. just a moment of thought makes clear that LLMs are not capable to debug their own code because if they were they would be able to write better code. the LLM code doesn't even need to be clever.

Re: The Zig project's rationale for their anti-AI contribution policy

#373

Post by tovej »

porridgeraisin wrote: post #247
matkoniecz wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No one reads docs, or goes through tests. I regularly do both when trying to use library, especially unfamiliar to me.

Dare I say you're in the minority

I hope not. How else are you learning to use the library? The only other option is to read the source, which is also a good idea eventually, if something is unclear, but why would you _start_ there?

Re: The Zig project's rationale for their anti-AI contribution policy

#374

Post by jmcqk6 »

pxc wrote: post #324
zeeveener wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm personally amazed that _Large_ OSS projects don't have the appropriate automation in place to prevent non-compiling or non-linter-passing submissions. - Hooks (although there's no clean way to enforce they be "installed" on a clone), GHA Workflows (or their equivalents on other forges). This might be my bias showing, but these are items I would consider table-stakes for a project of a certain size / level of popu…

> Hooks (although there's no clean way to enforce they be "installed" on a clone), GHA Workflows (or their equivalents on other forges). Git supports pre-receive hooks. But big multitenant forges like GitHub.com don't allow you to configure them because they're difficult to secure well. (Some of their commercial features are likely based on them, though.) If you self-host a forge, though, you can configure arbitrary…

You're still talking about compute resources that need to be paid for and maintained for that. Spamming AI PR's is going to cost a lot of money.

Re: The Zig project's rationale for their anti-AI contribution policy

#375

Post by wyre »

em-bee wrote: post #372
ModernMech wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like the new corollary to that rule, which is that if the AI is the best coder in the room and writes code too clever for itself, then no one including the AI can debug the code. Then where does that leave you?

i love it. just a moment of thought makes clear that LLMs are not capable to debug their own code because if they were they would be able to write better code. the LLM code doesn't even need to be clever.

That’s why you don’t use SOTA xhigh models to write your code, so you can use the xhigh model to debug the code.

Re: The Zig project's rationale for their anti-AI contribution policy

#376

Post by SuperV1234 »

em-bee wrote: post #366
SuperV1234 wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could extend that argument to any tool used by the developer, like a linter, sanitizer, the IDE itself, or even auto-completion. Why target LLMs specifically? The more I think about it, the more nonsensical it is. - What if I do everything by hand, but have an LLM review my work at the very end? - What if I have an LLM guide me through the codebase just by specifying the files I should read and in what order, but…

linter, sanitizer, the IDE itself, or even auto-completion unlike LLMs, those are deterministic. the IDE doesn't even change the code. auto-completion only has a problem if it is done with AI.

What is the actual problem with the lack of determinism?

Why is auto-completion a problem if it's done with AI?

Re: The Zig project's rationale for their anti-AI contribution policy

#377

Post by SuperV1234 »

slopinthebag wrote: post #348
SuperV1234 wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://claude.ai/share/f38ee8a6-56f1-408a-a536-211eb34c7045 I mostly agree with the assessment. IMHO: hard, inflexible rules like these are always deeply rooted in biases and personal convictions, not in facts. The suggested policy amendment by Claude at the end is much more honest, logical, and palatable.

Did you just link an AI chat in an internet comment because you were too lazy to both think of a reply and write one out? Lmao bro has completely outsourced their thinking to AI, this is comical

I'm glad you find it entertaining.

Now read the actual points made by the AI with an open mind and a critical mindset, instead of dismissing them because they were not written by a human being.

The point I'm making is that this policy is so stupid that even an LLM can easily figure out the logical flaws. Perhaps an LLM could have also helped you figure out the point of my original comment.

Re: The Zig project's rationale for their anti-AI contribution policy

#378

Post by pjmlp »

miyoji wrote: post #371
WarmWash wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tangential side story, but an interesting one none the less. I was a food delivery driver back in the mid 00's to the mid teens. Early on, GPS was rare and expensive, so to do deliveries and do them effectively, you had to be able to read a map and mentally plan out efficient routes from the stochastic flow of orders coming out. This acted as a natural filter, and "delivery driver" tended to be an interesting class o…

> That being said, I'm not sure end users noticed much difference. I have friends who order a lot of DoorDash and UberEats and they complain constantly about how awful the delivery service is. The problem isn't that they haven't noticed, it's that they keep paying for the terrible service, even as the price goes up.

Sums up pretty much how offshoring works on our industry.

There are cool people on the other side as well, unfortunately those aren't usually who get assigned unless escalations take place.

Most shops are built based on juniors that need to build enough curriculum to go elsewhere as soon as they get some scars.

Yet not only those projects keep coming, now plenty managers dream about replacing those juniors with agents.

Re: The Zig project's rationale for their anti-AI contribution policy

#379

Post by pjmlp »

bojo wrote: post #335
WarmWash wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tangential side story, but an interesting one none the less. I was a food delivery driver back in the mid 00's to the mid teens. Early on, GPS was rare and expensive, so to do deliveries and do them effectively, you had to be able to read a map and mentally plan out efficient routes from the stochastic flow of orders coming out. This acted as a natural filter, and "delivery driver" tended to be an interesting class o…

I love this anecdote. It highlights what our industry continues to forget: The end user doesn't care. Don't get me wrong, tech is why I am here. But if it works, Alice and Bob don't care one bit about how the product exists.

That is why Alice and Bob get Electron apps, Webviews on mobile, mostly coded by offshoring teams.

Re: The Zig project's rationale for their anti-AI contribution policy

#380

Post by em-bee »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #308
ap99 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This mindset is fine (it's mine essentially too). But it absolutely has to be combined with verification/testing at the same speed as code production.

I've found that for non-trivial features, I typically benefit from 3-4 rounds of: are you sure this isn't tech debt, are you sure this is thoroughly tested for (manually insert the applicable cases, because they aren't great at this, even if explicitly asked), are you sure this isn't re-inventing wheels, adding unnecessary complexity by not using existing infrastructure it should or that other existing code would not…

working this way would drive me nuts
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