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Zig Creator Calls Spade a Spade, Anthropic Blows Smoke

raymyers.org

141–150 of 862 posts

Re: Zig Creator Calls Spade a Spade, Anthropic Blows Smoke

#141
This paragraph is written by AI. I did not notice it earlier in the piece:

> The piece about the migration process is very cool, with details that are reusable. No complaints, I think that’s the real contribution here. I particularly like the honesty in explaining that this was a port to unsafe Rust, allowing a literal file-by-file migration to minimize risk, paving the way for redesign in future steps. That’s a sensible move explained well.

Re: Zig Creator Calls Spade a Spade, Anthropic Blows Smoke

#142
What I have been missing in all this debate is substance. I don't care that Bun was ported to Rust; I don't care that Andrew wrote a hit piece about it; I don't care that Anthropic sells shovels in the gold rush.

What I do care about is technical details. Jared shared some motivation as to why they ported to Rust, and I think they look valid (even if provided with sparse evidence). But I have not seen any sort of refutation from Andrew that these are not actually issues or how they should be solved in Zig canonically. I'd really like to see an exploration of these arguments, specifically pertaining to the Zig code as it was written for Bun.

Re: Zig Creator Calls Spade a Spade, Anthropic Blows Smoke

#143
post #137

One of the things I find so disappointing about Kelley's behavior here is that he falsely accused Jarred Sumner of lying about fuzzing Bun, and then when Sumner showed evidence[0] that they've been fuzzing Bun for months, Kelley just silently edited his post[1] to walk back the accusation and never apologized or admitted he was wrong. I commented on Mastodon[2] to point out to Kelley that it's dishonest to silently r…

> The post claims they were fuzzing their Zig code, while during our calls the whole Bun team told us that they were not fuzzing anything If you read the post again this sentence is not removed and Sumner did not refute that

Right, that part is not in dispute.

If Sumner says today, "We do X," then Kelley can say, "Nine months ago, Sumner did not do X," and both can be correct. What Kelley can't do is say, "It's an outright fabrication that Sumner does X today," based on an observation from nine months ago.

Re: Zig Creator Calls Spade a Spade, Anthropic Blows Smoke

#144

I stand with Andrew. As someone who's been following Sumner's work closely for years, Kelley's accusations are very much true even if unkind. While the results are useful and cool, it a wankfluencer op from start to finish. I dare you to refute thus. And I say all this as someone who does agentic development 8hrs a day and someone who always pestered my team to opt for Rust and Deno instead of Node. Call a spade a sp…

> But I'm glad he stayed honest to himself instead and didn't have a PR team ghostwrite his thoughts. If there's one thing I learned in this debacle is "I should spend 1-2 days and send to a close friend before hitting publish on a firey reply." The way Andrew rephrased the closing section is the kind of thing I should publish on the first edit in similar scenarios.

I also don’t really like his closing section, it has a big “sorry but not sorry” feeling to it.

Re: Zig Creator Calls Spade a Spade, Anthropic Blows Smoke

#145
post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean? It's literally been a significant part of their marketing.

Let’s assume their marketing argument is in good faith (it isn’t, they’re just capturing market knowing very well they won’t replace most software dev): Where did Anthropic say that they want to “end” software development. They make it more efficient, which could lead to less software developer. How is this “campaigning to end software engineering”? It’s an exaggeration at best, dishonest and sensationalist at worst

>Where did Anthropic say that they want to “end” software development.

https://digitalstrategy-ai.com/2026/01/23/claude-code-anthro...

Re: Zig Creator Calls Spade a Spade, Anthropic Blows Smoke

#147

What I have been missing in all this debate is substance. I don't care that Bun was ported to Rust; I don't care that Andrew wrote a hit piece about it; I don't care that Anthropic sells shovels in the gold rush. What I do care about is technical details. Jared shared some motivation as to why they ported to Rust, and I think they look valid (even if provided with sparse evidence). But I have not seen any sort of ref…

Andrew essentially wrote that “bun code was bad anyway”.

And also he implied he doesn’t even want to engage with anything relating to this since Jarred is toxic and there is no value in the debate.

I think these points are fairly clear from his blog post

Re: Zig Creator Calls Spade a Spade, Anthropic Blows Smoke

#148

I think like most people, I don’t have a problem with Andrew “calling a spade a spade,” even if I find his reasoning motivated. The bigger problem with the post is that it talks out of both ends of the mouth: it’s clearly meant as a personal attack, but also insists that it isn’t. When I read the post, my first thought was that I wouldn’t want to build things in Zig, because any technical decision I make, good or bad…

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Re: Zig Creator Calls Spade a Spade, Anthropic Blows Smoke

#149

I stand with Andrew. As someone who's been following Sumner's work closely for years, Kelley's accusations are very much true even if unkind. While the results are useful and cool, it a wankfluencer op from start to finish. I dare you to refute thus. And I say all this as someone who does agentic development 8hrs a day and someone who always pestered my team to opt for Rust and Deno instead of Node. Call a spade a sp…

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Re: Zig Creator Calls Spade a Spade, Anthropic Blows Smoke

#150
post #3

Did we read the same Anthropic and Andrew Kelly's posts? Anthropic is not in the programming language market; their post about rewriting Bun in Rust is full of technical details that led to improving the end product for their users. Zig's response is a sour opinion piece full of personal attacks. For context, I'm using Codex and have no interest in either Zig or Rust, so just observing this drama from the sidelines.

Did we read the same Anthropic and Andrew Kelly's posts?

Anthropic's posts were sanctimonious, self-serving, tone-concealed delegitimisation of Zig. Kelly's post was a strategically poor but sincere individual understandably frustrated at this concealed attack, expressing his honest feelings about the situation.

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