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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

#581

Post by mekoka »

hypfer wrote: post #152
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…

> Because value of a project is not in the code produced. It's in the amount of battle-testing that code has seen. Rel: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-...

As entertaining as that article was when it came out, I think its apparent wisdom should have been reevaluated for at least the past two decades. Even back when it was written, its pertinence was questionable, since it hinged on the perception that written code has particular value, to justify much of the failures at Netscape and Borland, neglecting many of the other -- probably more relevant -- business and human factors that were at play within the two organizations and their surrounding ecosystems. But lessons learned from watching startups fail in trove in the following two decades have mooted many of Joel's arguments. With the vantage of hindsight, if you read JWZ's account of what went on at Netscape, some of the dysfunctions become glaring.

Making software projects successful has always been about a lot more than just writing code. People have been "rewriting code from scratch" successfully even before LLMs. We just don't tend to call it that. We call it "cloning", "competition", "copy", "alternative-to", "reverse-engineering", "x-written-in-language-y", etc.

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

#582

Post by mi_lk »

Aurornis wrote: post #391
jraph wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't intend to write misleading stuff that makes Zig look bad when you leave and if you avoid ghosting the Zig foundation in scheduled meetings you had with them, I suppose you should be good.

> If you don't intend to write misleading stuff that makes Zig look bad What misleading stuff? Makes Zig look bad how? The posts I read were appreciative to Zig. The only “misleading” piece of either blog post that I recall was the Andrew Kelley claim that Bun wasn’t fuzzing, which was easily refuted by pointing to their fuzzing work. If there’s something more then I’d like to see it, but every time I ask nobody can…

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48891496

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

#583

Post by ashishb »

coldtea wrote: post #38
ashishb wrote: post #23

Languages do matter. And I think the only sensible backend languages when starting a new for-profit project is Python, Go, and Rust for 99% use-cases. In other cases, third-party packages, tooling, integrations, and telemetry starts to suffer.

Keeping it to the most mainstream, Java is a mighty fine choice as well, with even better options for third-party packages, tooling, integrations, and telemetry than most of the above.

I think most organizations don't want to increase their Java usage.

And the reason is not technical. Technically, it is a great language.

Legally, it feels risky to most.

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

#584

Post by mech998877 »

fluoridation wrote: post #502
mech998877 wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree with this, and I've been spending time thinking about it because some of my friends had a similar conversation. The friction itself does not add value. The time spent thinking on the problem does. Friction should be minimized beyond the absolute bare minimum. Programming is a discipline where your workstation is already streamlined, and it is easy to forget where the friction is. Programming is done in a w…

>Programming is done in a world of pure though, in a sense, so most of the friction already lives in your head It seems that way, but that's not actually true. A fully greased-up brain would produce just incoherent nonsense decoupled from reality, because it would lack all constraints that would allow it to judge the value of an idea (i.e. how possible and useful it would be to implement in the real world). The frict…

Your concluding example doesn't make sense to me but I think that it's because we have different definitions for what friction means here. It's also kind of hard to define in context.

I would say that, within the Wright Brothers example, working with a battered, worn-out screwdriver is an example of friction (or, perhaps having to use a bit and brace instead of a power drill), but the act of building a new unsuccessful airplane iteration is not friction. Every build is asking physics for feedback on the design; every airplane build is just the same as running your code through the compiler. I wish I had a good word to distinguish this from friction. The closest thing I can imagine is how waste is defined in Lean Manufacturing, but keeping in mind that what you are manufacturing is Ideas and Software.

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

#585

Post by karahime »

jeswin wrote: post #121

Anything that can be written in Rust will be written in Rust. I'm using Rust as a placeholder for a language with excellent performance and safety characteristics. It may not be a good thing, but there's no way around it.

If we expand the placeholder, I think "Anything that can be rewritten in a language with excellent performance and safety characteristics will be rewritten in a language with excellent performance and safety characteristics" is a desirable state of affairs.

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

#586

Post by iooi »

jonkoops wrote: post #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 ref…

> I don't care that Anthropic sells shovels in the gold rush

The people selling shovels are the ones building data centers and energy. Tokens are the "gold".

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

#587

Post by duggan »

gavinsyancey wrote: post #263
manphone wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah -- if it wasn't worth your time to write the post, why do I think it should be worth my time to read it?

Fabulous use of meta-irony, bravo.

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

#588

Post by maleldil »

metoobruh wrote: post #550
gedy wrote: post #537

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They may not be a majority, but if kinder souls decide to leave for a more welcoming community Given the context, you mean Rust? Nothing against Rust folks but I wouldn't really call it more welcoming community.

[flagged]

> ONE angry blog

It's not the first. He recently called GitHub employees "monkeys".

> What Bun did here is basically a sabotage of Zig's reputation

How?

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

#589

Post by Ygg2 »

selfmodruntime wrote: post #450
Ygg2 wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good job falling for the Zig propaganda. I say that half-jokingly. EDIT: You can't be serious people. Rust unsafe is safer than C, if for nothing else, for knowing which pointers are aliasable.

This isn't propaganda, the Rust compiler's rules when using the unsafe keyword are difficult to uphold, which is why the community wrote Miri.

Ok, and how does, in your opinion, compiler rules enforcement work in an unsafe block?

And how does Miri help solve this issue?

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

#590

Post by tomnipotent »

metoobruh wrote: post #550
gedy wrote: post #537

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They may not be a majority, but if kinder souls decide to leave for a more welcoming community Given the context, you mean Rust? Nothing against Rust folks but I wouldn't really call it more welcoming community.

[flagged]

> perpetually offended snowflakes

This attitude is so precious to me - "Sorry guys, you can't criticize my criticism."

> What Bun did here is basically a sabotage of Zig's reputation

If Zig's reputation was so fragile that Bun migrating to Rust caused this kerfuffle, then Bun isn't the issue.

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