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Zig Creator Calls Spade a Spade, Anthropic Blows Smoke

raymyers.org

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

#791

Post by overgard »

woodruffw wrote: post #741
overgard wrote: post #725

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're suggesting that the bugs are endemic to using Zig and couldn't be prevented by a modified coding style. Then they point out that the well known way to avoid the issue (defer) is "not ergonomic" (really one extra line is that bad?) It seems like a lot of misinformation couched in a reasonable sounding tone, which is par for the course for how these labs operate.

I don’t think the basic idea that Zig is less safe than a language like Rust (and therefore has different classes of “endemic” bugs) is controversial among Zig programmers. The points they make around explicit defers are a lot more subtle than it being too many lines. Quoting: > For Zig code, when exactly should we be running the cleanup code? If we're passing the same *T to many different functions, how do we know w…

I've seen plenty of projects in C with way more complexity and far fewer issues than Bun, and C is definitely less safe than Zig. Memory management strategies are not new things! Professional developers learn to use their tools effectively. After reading the article and the connected context I just get the sense that this is a poorly developed codebase. A bad carpenter blames his tools and all that. I agree with the article that this seems to be about culture. A vibe coded port that explicitly uses unsafe in Rust is not going to be any safer.

I mean look, I'm sorry, but at this point I cannot take the Bun project seriously. If people are bragging about not-bothering-to-read-the-code and practicing atrocious engineering with LLMs, and then they're like "it's the language's fault!". Yeah, no, I don't buy it. Plenty of people can write applications in languages without automatic memory management without endemic use-after-free issues. As vibe coders like to say: skill issue.

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

#792

Post by overgard »

p-e-w wrote: post #181
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…

> I think the Zig people are really just concerned that maybe Zig itself is a DOA language because it doesn't offer enough over C for any serious use and their flagship project has now abandoned it. You hit the nail on the head there. Zig is 10 years old now and it’s pretty clear that the industry isn’t biting, compared to the behemoth that is Rust. Between Rust, C, and C++ there is very little room for another langu…

This is just a dumb take, hardly any language is immediately popular. Python, Ruby, etc. were still pretty niche 10 years in. Pretty much every popular language is 15+ years old.

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

#793

Post by oblio »

handoflixue wrote: post #789
oblio wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LLMs needing harnesses is a hit on AI because it means LLMs can't be extended a lot (or indefinitely as AI boosters hope). We're back to (enhanced) expert systems from the 80s and nobody is excited about those. And regarding SpaceX, SpaceX even without xAI didn't make a ton of money and it's business initiatives are super long horizon things. Moon bases won't be profitable for at least 10 years and Mars bases probabl…

Coders needing compilers is a hit on coding because it means coding can't be extended a lot? I'm just not following the logic at all. We build vastly more ambitious software today than we did in the 80s

That's an intentionally obtuse comment.

Compilers are widely available as open source software not coming from companies that need to justify a $1tn valuation ASAP for their development of LLMs.

Also the LLM = compiler comparison is generally just ridiculous. Their complexity, both internal and in usage for coding are multiple orders of magnitude apart.

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

#794

Post by socialcommenter »

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…

Kelley's blog post reads as follows:

> The post implies you were diligently fuzzing your Zig code, while during our calls the Bun team told us that they were not fuzzing anything.

That's not compatible with saying that Kelley made the misleading claims. Bun told him they were not fuzzing. If they brought receipts later that indicate they lied, what should we be left to believe?

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

#795

Post by woodruffw »

Arainach wrote: post #779
woodruffw wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You haven’t answered it, and I can’t find a fair reading that would lend itself to that interpretation either. You can easily correct me by quoting the part of the Bun post that you find to be “making a big fuss.” (Surely a relatively bland technical criticism of Zig - one that gets couched with praise - does not count as “a big fuss.”)

> making a big fuss about them in Zig - to the point of maintaining a compiler fork Literal quote (and again, appeared in the original article as well). Forking the compiler to try to get faster compile times is a significant effort that absolutely counts as raising a fuss.

The word “fuss” doesn’t occur in the original Bun article.

I also don’t think that forking the compiler is a big fuss. Large companies do that all the time, to carry whatever patches they haven’t upstreamed yet (or can’t). It’s really not that big of a deal.

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

#796

Post by woodruffw »

turtlebits wrote: post #756
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…

I appreciate having an opinion vs a bunch of safe words saying nothing. Most CEO communication probably isn't even written by them and has a person-less touch. It's totally fine to get a negative reaction and avoid the project. It's called having human emotions, which is actually healthy. Getting feedback is how you learn and grow as a person.

There’s a difference between having a negative reaction, which is a natural human thing, and talking out of both sides of your mouth. You can also have negative things to say (or just strong opinions) without being indecorous or unkind.

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

#797

Post by woodruffw »

overgard wrote: post #791
woodruffw wrote: post #741

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think the basic idea that Zig is less safe than a language like Rust (and therefore has different classes of “endemic” bugs) is controversial among Zig programmers. The points they make around explicit defers are a lot more subtle than it being too many lines. Quoting: > For Zig code, when exactly should we be running the cleanup code? If we're passing the same *T to many different functions, how do we know w…

I've seen plenty of projects in C with way more complexity and far fewer issues than Bun, and C is definitely less safe than Zig. Memory management strategies are not new things! Professional developers learn to use their tools effectively. After reading the article and the connected context I just get the sense that this is a poorly developed codebase. A bad carpenter blames his tools and all that. I agree with the…

I don’t have an opinion about whether Bun is poorly coded or not. I also don’t have an opinions on it being a good project or not.

I do find these kinds of “get good” arguments tiresome, though. Our job as responsible engineers is to develop strong and safe abstractions for the next group of engineers to use. Rust is one such abstraction.

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

#799

Post by endospore »

Aurornis wrote: post #426
Animats wrote: post #129

Oh, they're converting Bun to unsafe rust. That's easy, but useless. That's the sort of thing c2rust does - transpile to an low level language which is unsafe Rust with a set of functions that unsafely emulate C pointer semantics. You don't need an LLM for that. There's no point. It's not doing the job DARPA's TRACTOR program is trying to do - translate C to safe Rust. I've used c2rust. It works, but what you get out…

> Oh, they're converting Bun to unsafe rust. That's easy, but useless. You really need to escape the Zig vs Rust language wars bubble to get a real read on what Bun was doing. They started by attempting a more direct translation. Not quite transliteration but close. At this stage they wanted to bootstrap the codebase into Rust as quickly as possible using parallel agent sessions, which requires minimizing the number…

> ignoring the fact that it was an intermediate step.

They are going to release the "intermediate step" with all its issues as v1.4. I think that says a lot about which party is ignoring facts. (hint: not me, not you, not Andrew)

> The “unsafe” part is also confusing

They are right in this case. The code base contains thousands of the most unsafe unsafe blocks I've ever seen in Rust.

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

#800

Post by pcollins123 »

eptcyka wrote: post #692
ksec wrote: post #658

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>like linus lol I am not even sure if that is an insult. Linus attack on " things " he dislike and call the person out on it. I don't believe Linus has ever call out on that person's other non related behaviour. People keep using Linus here as if they are the same. They are not.

What is the behaviour that Jarred was called out for that was not related to Bun?

Being a bad manager. That’s a very personal attack.
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