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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

#711

Post by TeriyakiBomb »

sph wrote: post #356
TeriyakiBomb wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A drum I've been banging increasingly often recently is that having friction and time to work ideas over in your mind adds huge amounts of value. Vibe coded projects have this very specific, well, vibe to them where you can clearly see that the lack of time to digest has allowed the person to not challenge their own worst impulses. You can see it in the feature bloat, the lack of depth and polish in core features and…

Yes, there is a widespread belief in tech that 'removing friction' is a good direction to aim for. But you can have too little friction that completely ruins a product and the user experience. In game design friction very important; remove all friction and you don't even have a game any more, you might as well show the You Win screen. My favourite metaphor for it is sex: there is no sex without friction. What LLM hav…

I don't think it inherently devalues it. But the mediocre baseline for it and how much it entices you to allow it to just spit out that mediocrity takes discipline I don't think everyone has. I've seen some lean in and keep their heads just fine. I've seen others lean in and become disillusioned.

Worst of all I've seen good engineers lean in and begin thinking uncritically and magically.

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

#712

Post by ares623 »

woodruffw wrote: post #28

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…

Andrew didn't make the hit piece out of nowhere, unprovoked.

Jared, using Anthropic's multi-billion dollar microphone, painted Zig in a bad light with their first (denied) attempt to merge a vibecoded PR to improve Zig's build times.

Then very shortly after that failed attempt, about 11 days later I gather, Jared (again with help from Anthropic's very big microphone) made public the Zig-to-Rust port.

So unless you're planning on getting acquihired by Anthropic _and_ planning on porting away from Rust using their tools very publicly, I think you'll be safe from such pieces.

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

#713

Post by ibejoeb »

woodruffw wrote: post #707
ibejoeb wrote: post #697

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't say or imply that it did. I just don't believe that the decision to port bun was based on innate technical merits of zig vs rust. I also don't think that it is entirely meritless, as I mentioned, because now that there's a par rewrite, there is clear delineation of the areas that need to be ported to safe rust. Still, does anyone really think that this would have happened without Anthropic's provocation? I s…

I don't understand how a port is a "provocation." That's a very cynical and transactional way of thinking about open source. (As for Anthropic's motivation: only they know. But I suspect that they saw Zig's AI policy as a potentially existential risk, and moved to de-risk their position. That is a technical decision, just not one rooted in the merits of any particular language.)

By provocation, I mean what motivated the port. I'm not suggesting that it was "provocative" like with intent to bother the zig team. That's why I ask if anyone thinks that bun would be ported to rust if not for the Anthropic deal. I doubt it, and I think that's why it took everyone by surprise.

Regarding zig becoming a risk: that's a reasonable line of thinking that I hadn't considered. I don't know how likely it is that zig will fail to progress and fall behind as a language compared to others that are assisted with AI, but it's a possibility.

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

#714

Post by TeriyakiBomb »

deaton wrote: post #359
TeriyakiBomb wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A drum I've been banging increasingly often recently is that having friction and time to work ideas over in your mind adds huge amounts of value. Vibe coded projects have this very specific, well, vibe to them where you can clearly see that the lack of time to digest has allowed the person to not challenge their own worst impulses. You can see it in the feature bloat, the lack of depth and polish in core features and…

I think you're right, and I think this principle of friction-is-good-actually applies to a lot more domains than just software, but whether the world will ever accept that is a different question.

I also think it's universal. When talking about this IRL I always say:

"If one teenager works hard and saves for a few years to buy themselves a car and another has theirs bought for them on a whim, who would appreciate their car more?"

Odds are it's the former, not always. But mostly.

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

#715

Post by mikey_p »

budsniffer952 wrote: post #491
cropcirclbureau wrote: post #55

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…

> Call a spade a spade, the rewrite was poorly justified In what world do you think they have to justify a rewrite to anyone outside their company? Bizarre mentality.

They didn't have to but Anthropic chose to open their mouth and announce their "reasons" for the rewrite. Don't blame anyone but Anthropic for this, they didn't have to try to justify it, but they decided to anyway.

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

#716

Post by mech998877 »

TeriyakiBomb wrote: post #709
fluoridation wrote: post #620

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like you're not disagreeing with what the other person was saying then, you're just disagreeing with their application of the word "friction". I don't think it makes much sense to argue about the precise definition of a metaphor.

Didn't see this reply before adding my own. Yes, I think we're in agreement.

fair enough. I'm probably still in disagreement with the friends I mentioned earlier!

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

#717

Post by edude03 »

overgard wrote: post #702
edude03 wrote: post #517

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I liken it to dieting. If your only goal is to be certain weight, then learning how to cook, learning how to portion, learning to make a meal plan, learning about macro nutrients is all "friction" now that we have GLPs. And maybe using a meal prep service reduces some "unnecessary friction" but you still would have to learn a bunch of useful skills along the way. Concretely, If your only goal is to produce "software"…

Nitpick, but this is misunderstanding GLPs (I'm on them). If you don't change your diet and your habits, yeah, you'll temporarily lose weight but it'll come right back when you're off it AND you'll lose a lot of muscle. You kinda still need to do "the right things", it's not a magic cure all. (Of course, same thing can be said of AI).

A fair callout, though yes it was supposed to be a simplified analogy. I think you got it exactly right though that its temporary in the same that I'd argue the benefits of using AI are temporary

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

#718

Post by woodruffw »

ibejoeb wrote: post #713
woodruffw wrote: post #707

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand how a port is a "provocation." That's a very cynical and transactional way of thinking about open source. (As for Anthropic's motivation: only they know. But I suspect that they saw Zig's AI policy as a potentially existential risk, and moved to de-risk their position. That is a technical decision, just not one rooted in the merits of any particular language.)

By provocation, I mean what motivated the port. I'm not suggesting that it was "provocative" like with intent to bother the zig team. That's why I ask if anyone thinks that bun would be ported to rust if not for the Anthropic deal. I doubt it, and I think that's why it took everyone by surprise. Regarding zig becoming a risk: that's a reasonable line of thinking that I hadn't considered. I don't know how likely it is…

Ah yeah, I agree with you.

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

#719

Post by sigmar »

overgard wrote: post #700
woodruffw wrote: post #28

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…

To me it's just highlighting the reality -- Anthropic fired the first shots. I think it's reasonable for people to say, hey, if you're going to trash the reputation of Zig (in a pretend-objective way) then it's entirely fair for people to put in important context that Bun was not written well.

>I think it's reasonable for people to say, hey, if you're going to trash the reputation of Zig (in a pretend-objective way)

what specifically is this referring to? Not aware of any comments from Anthropic on this topic.

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

#720

Post by [deleted] »

lioeters wrote: post #512
skybrian wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Porting TypeScript to Go in 7.0 doesn’t seem like bad engineering. Neither does this port, given that that Bun started out in a somewhat buggy state.

Completely different approaches. The TypeScript Go port was done responsibly, reviewing every line ported, publishing both runtimes in parallel to give it time for real-life battle testing, with plenty of communication to the community about what was happening. The Bun Rust port was irresponsible and unprofessional, merging a million lines of unreviewed code while gaslighting the community, relentlessly casting shade…

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