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Zig Creator Calls Spade a Spade, Anthropic Blows Smoke

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

#201

Post by jgalt212 »

RetroTechie wrote: post #97

There's so much good stuff in this post. Can't help to think of a recent HN post about most AI-generated projects being abandoned within months. Why? Because value of a project is not in the code produced. It's in the amount of battle-testing that code has seen. Battle-tested, mature code > fresh rewrite. Existing Zig codebase has seen X amount of battle-testing. Rust rewrite: 0 (except -I'm assuming- passing test su…

> How is that better than the Zig codebase you started with?

It's not better, it's worse given the average bear's assumption about a rust project.

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

#202

Post by VWWHFSfQ »

shirol wrote: post #192
petcat wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now if that's further migrated to safe Rust, put into production & gathered feedback from lots of users, yes then you have something. Obviously they have to start somewhere if they want to get to safe rust with a considerable degree of battle testing. So they decided to start with just a transliteration and go from there. I think the Zig people are really just concerned that maybe Zig itself is a DOA language becau…

> Just search "segfault" on the Zig issue tracker and you'll see why people are starting to be skeptical of the future utility of such a language in the face of something like Rust. Zig has 110 open "segfault" issues [1] versus Rust's 175 open "segfault" issues [2]. So, by your logic, Rust is also bad. edit: I was just trying to point out that the parent's "just search segfault" argument is lazy. Also, Zig is still i…

It's a bad metric, but also Zig didn't migrate all of their issues from GitHub. Run the same count on GitHub and you'll see the full picture

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

#203

Post by cyber_kinetist »

herrkanin wrote: post #117
RetroTechie wrote: post #97

There's so much good stuff in this post. Can't help to think of a recent HN post about most AI-generated projects being abandoned within months. Why? Because value of a project is not in the code produced. It's in the amount of battle-testing that code has seen. Battle-tested, mature code > fresh rewrite. Existing Zig codebase has seen X amount of battle-testing. Rust rewrite: 0 (except -I'm assuming- passing test su…

> How is that better than the Zig codebase you started with? In contrast with the Zig codebase, you now have clear well-scoped unsafe boundaries you can iteratively fix one by one. This was not the case before.

> clear well-scoped unsafe boundaries

This is not done by blindly porting Zig code 1:1 and calling it a day. You do have to make conscious decisions about code architecture to manage Unsafe code, since you need choose the right invariants for your Safe Rust code to conform inside the module (Note that unsafe pollutes the whole module containing it, not just the code inside the unsafe block!)

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

#204

Post by simjnd »

cognitiveinline wrote: post #94
simjnd wrote: post #13

Thank you. I was left confused after people praised the Bun to Rust blog post eventhough it contained very actual technical substance. No clear evaluation of options, very biased report on impact, missing figures. It absolutely didn't feel like an engineering blog post. Maybe people were more interested in the agentic part more than the actual rationale for the port in the first place, because it was very disappointi…

>very actual technical substance Did we read the same article? I mean it wasn't talking about a specific line of code, but it had deep architecture details, rational for memory safety and bugs, agentic coding patterns for scale. It was full of substance, multiple times.

I could point to the same examples this article refers to: the Bun blog post says "Having a rigid style guide [in Zig] with clear ownership expectations explicitly spelled out in the type system was a real option for Bun" and presents no technical reason why they didn't choose (or even TRY) that. They handwave it with "This is and ergonomic than the Zig we expect".

Why was it in their own words a real option? And why did they not go for it? This is the technical substance I'm looking for: an engineer explaining what options have been considered and what wanted and unwanted tradeoffs they present.

Also only mentioning figures for the platforms that saw an improvement is sketchy. "With ICU and code folding Windows and Linux get 20% smaller", what about macOS? Why did it not see the same gains? The fact that they don't mention it makes me think that they don't KNOW, and isn't confidence inspiring coming from the engineer who SHOULD know.

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

#206

Post by [deleted] »

pydry wrote: post #145
khalic wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

[deleted]

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

#207

Post by oblio »

handoflixue wrote: post #188

"We wrap LLMs in Agent harnesses because AI isn’t enough." This feels equivalent to saying you're not a real coder if you need a compiler to hold your hand. What, a human coder isn't enough? Of course we're going to improve tools by building more tools on top of them. That's how we went from punch cards to assembly to high-level languages!

Anthropic isn't selling that, that's the point. Anthropic is selling "coding is solved", worth $1tn.

If they keep hiring developers and LLMs need huge procedural harnesses, then the hypocrisy is open for all to see. And worse for them, it probably means their business model is worth maybe 5-10x what Jetbrains is worth, not $1tn.

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

#208

Post by manphone »

sph wrote: post #128
RetroTechie wrote: post #97

There's so much good stuff in this post. Can't help to think of a recent HN post about most AI-generated projects being abandoned within months. Why? Because value of a project is not in the code produced. It's in the amount of battle-testing that code has seen. Battle-tested, mature code > fresh rewrite. Existing Zig codebase has seen X amount of battle-testing. Rust rewrite: 0 (except -I'm assuming- passing test su…

They get abandoned because they get generated on a whim. Sunk cost fallacy can be a feature: if you have spent a lot of blood, sweat, and tears on a project, you are more likely to push it through adversity and the doldrums that inevitably one will encounter. If all it took was one of those momentarily brilliant ideas and a prompt on Claude to produce something, there is no attachment whatsoever to it. Speaking as th…

It’s the same reason why everyone doesn’t wanna read LLM generated blog posts. The agreement used to be generally that you would spend more time writing than I would have to spend reading and when the agreement changes the quality changes as well.

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

#209

Post by pydry »

manphone wrote: post #208
sph wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They get abandoned because they get generated on a whim. Sunk cost fallacy can be a feature: if you have spent a lot of blood, sweat, and tears on a project, you are more likely to push it through adversity and the doldrums that inevitably one will encounter. If all it took was one of those momentarily brilliant ideas and a prompt on Claude to produce something, there is no attachment whatsoever to it. Speaking as th…

It’s the same reason why everyone doesn’t wanna read LLM generated blog posts. The agreement used to be generally that you would spend more time writing than I would have to spend reading and when the agreement changes the quality changes as well.

Or rather because they are always just of poor quality

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

#210

Post by simjnd »

RetroTechie wrote: post #97

There's so much good stuff in this post. Can't help to think of a recent HN post about most AI-generated projects being abandoned within months. Why? Because value of a project is not in the code produced. It's in the amount of battle-testing that code has seen. Battle-tested, mature code > fresh rewrite. Existing Zig codebase has seen X amount of battle-testing. Rust rewrite: 0 (except -I'm assuming- passing test su…

I don't think Zig community is triggered, I think only Zig's creator is triggered because he is afraid of people interpreting this as "Zig is unsuitable for X".

I think a lot of people will, but those who do probably weren't the target audience for Zig in the first place?

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