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Open-source Zig book

zigbook.net

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Re: Open-source Zig book

#101

Post by James_K »

mendelmaleh wrote: post #64

> The Zigbook intentionally contains no AI-generated content—it is hand-written, carefully curated, and continuously updated to reflect the latest language features and best practices. I think it's time to have a badge for non LLM content, and avoid the rest.

> Most programming languages hide complexity from you—they abstract away memory management, mask control flow with implicit operations, and shield you from the machine beneath. This feels simple at first, but eventually you hit a wall. You need to understand why something is slow, where a crash happened, or how to squeeze every ounce of performance from your hardware. Suddenly, the abstractions that helped you get started are now in your way.

> Zig takes a different path. It reveals complexity—and then gives you the tools to master it.

> This book will take you from Hello, world! to building systems that cross-compile to any platform, manage memory with surgical precision, and generate code at compile time. You will learn not just how Zig works, but why it works the way it does. Every allocation will be explicit. Every control path will be visible. Every abstraction will be precise, not vague.

But sadly people like the prompter of this book will lie and pretend to have written things themselves that they did not. First three paragraphs by the way, and a bingo for every sign of AI.

Re: Open-source Zig book

#102

Post by fifhtbtbf »

ropable wrote: post #93
wild_egg wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Literally the heading as soon as you click the submitted link > Learning Zig is not just about adding a language to your resume. It is about fundamentally changing how you think about software. The "it's not X, it's Y" phrasing screams LLM these days

It's almost as though the LLMs were trained on all the writing conventions which are used by humans and are parroting those, instead of generating novel outputs themselves.

They haven’t picked up any one human writing style, they’ve converged on a weird amalgamation of expressions and styles that taken together don’t resemble any real humans writing and begin to feel quite unnatural.

Re: Open-source Zig book

#103

Post by gre »

simonklee wrote: post #22
jasonjmcghee wrote: post #2

So despite this... > The Zigbook intentionally contains no AI-generated content—it is hand-written, carefully curated, and continuously updated to reflect the latest language features and best practices. I just don't buy it. I'm 99% sure this is written by an LLM. Can the author... Convince me otherwise? > This journey begins with simplicity—the kind you encounter on the first day. By the end, you will discover a dif…

It's just an odd claim to make when it feels very much like AI generated content + publish the text anonymously. It's obviously possible to write like this without AI, but I can't remember reading something like this that wasn't written by AI. It doesn't take away from the fact that someone used a bunch of time and effort on this project.

Did they actually spend a bunch of time and effort though? I think you could get an llm to generate the entire thing, website and all.

Check out the sleek looking terminal--there's no ls, cd, it's just an ai hallucination.

Re: Open-source Zig book

#104

Post by maipen »

eibrahim wrote: post #99

So many comments about the AI generation part. Why does it matter? If it’s good and accurate and helpful why do you care? That’s like saying you used a calculator to calculate your equations so I can’t trust you. I am just impressed by the quality and details and approach of it all. Nicely done (PS: I know nothing about systems programming and I have been writing code for 25 years)

Insecurity, that's why.

I too have this feeling sometimes. It's a coping mechanism. I don't know why we have this but I guess we have to see past it and adapt to reality.

Re: Open-source Zig book

#106

Post by mef51 »

James_K wrote: post #101
mendelmaleh wrote: post #64

> The Zigbook intentionally contains no AI-generated content—it is hand-written, carefully curated, and continuously updated to reflect the latest language features and best practices. I think it's time to have a badge for non LLM content, and avoid the rest.

> Most programming languages hide complexity from you—they abstract away memory management, mask control flow with implicit operations, and shield you from the machine beneath. This feels simple at first, but eventually you hit a wall. You need to understand why something is slow, where a crash happened, or how to squeeze every ounce of performance from your hardware. Suddenly, the abstractions that helped you get st…

The em dashes?

Re: Open-source Zig book

#107

Post by hatefulmoron »

eibrahim wrote: post #99

So many comments about the AI generation part. Why does it matter? If it’s good and accurate and helpful why do you care? That’s like saying you used a calculator to calculate your equations so I can’t trust you. I am just impressed by the quality and details and approach of it all. Nicely done (PS: I know nothing about systems programming and I have been writing code for 25 years)

If you believed that you wouldn't explicitly say there was no AI generated content at all, you'd let it speak for itself.

Re: Open-source Zig book

#108

Post by ants_everywhere »

ModernMech wrote: post #98
ants_everywhere wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO HN should add a guideline about not insinuating things were written by AI. It degrades the quality of the site similarly to many of the existing rules. Arguably it would be covered by some of the existing rules, but it's become such a common occurrence that it may need singling out.

What degrades conversation is to lie about something being not AI when it actually is. People pointing out the fraud are right to do so. One thing I've learned is that comment sections are a vital defense on AI content spreading, because while you might fool some people, it's hard to fool all the people. There have been times I've been fooled by AI only to see in the comments the consensus that it is AI. So now it's…

It's 2025, people are going to use technology and its use will spread.

There are intentional communities devoted to stopping the spread of technology, but HN isn't currently one of them. And I've never seen an HN discussion where curiosity was promoted by accusations or insinuations of LLM use.

It seems consistent to me with the rules against low effort snark, sarcasm, insinuating shilling, and ideological battles. I don't personally have a problem with people waging ideological battles about AI, but it does seem contrary to the spirit of the site for so many technical discussions to be derailed so consistently in ways that specifically try to silence a form of expression.

Re: Open-source Zig book

#109

Post by James_K »

mef51 wrote: post #106
James_K wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most programming languages hide complexity from you—they abstract away memory management, mask control flow with implicit operations, and shield you from the machine beneath. This feels simple at first, but eventually you hit a wall. You need to understand why something is slow, where a crash happened, or how to squeeze every ounce of performance from your hardware. Suddenly, the abstractions that helped you get st…

The em dashes?

There's also the classic “it's not just X, it's Y”, adjective overuse, rule of 3, total nonsense (manage memory with surgical precision? what does that mean?), etc. One of these is excusable, but text entirely comprised of AI indicators is either deliberately written to mimic AI style, or the product of AI.

Re: Open-source Zig book

#110

Post by gassi »

eibrahim wrote: post #99

So many comments about the AI generation part. Why does it matter? If it’s good and accurate and helpful why do you care? That’s like saying you used a calculator to calculate your equations so I can’t trust you. I am just impressed by the quality and details and approach of it all. Nicely done (PS: I know nothing about systems programming and I have been writing code for 25 years)

> Why does it matter?

Because AI gets things wrong, often, in ways that can be very difficult to catch. By their very nature LLMs write text that sounds plausible enough to bypass manual review (see https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2025/07/14/death-by-a-thousand-s...), so some find it best to avoid using it at all when writing documentation.

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