111–120 of 426 posts
It looks cool! No experience with Zig so can't comment on the accuracy, but I will take a look at it this week. Also a bit annoying that there is no PDF version that I could download as the website is pretty slow. After taking a look at the repository ( https://github.com/zigbook/zigbook/tree/main ), each page seems to be written in AsciiDoc, so I'll take a look about compiling a PDF version later today.
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)
A calculator exists solely for the realm of mathematics, where you can afford to more or less throw away the value of human input and overall craftsmanship.
That is not the case with something like this, which - while it leans in to engineering - is in effect viewed as a work of art by people who give a shit about the actual craft of writing software.
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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.
Anyway, if someone says they didn't use AI, I would personally give them the benefit of the doubt for a while at least.
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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…
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.
Quality prose usually only becomes that after many reviews.
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Clearly your perception of what is AI generated is wrong. You can't tell something is AI generated only because it uses "not just X - Y" constructions. I mean, the reason AI text often uses it is because it's common in the training material. So of course you're going to see it everywhere.
Find me some text from pre-AI that uses so many of these constructions in such close proximity if it’s really so easy - I don’t think you’ll have much luck. Good authors have many tactics in their rhetorical bag of tricks. They don’t just keep using the same one over and over.
Humans were learning the same patterns off each other. Such style advice has been floating around on e.g. LinkedIn for a while now. Just a couple years later, humans are (predictably) still doing it, even if the LLMs are now too.
We should be giving each other a bit of break. I'd personally be offended if someone thought I was a clanker.
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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…
I'm 100% okay with AI spreading. I use it every day. This isn't a matter of an ideological battle against AI, it's a matter of fraudulent misrepresentation. This wouldn't be a discussion if the author themselves hadn't claimed what they had, so I don't see why the community should be barred from calling that out. Why bother having curious discussions about this book when they are blatantly lying about what is present…
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I'm 100% okay with AI spreading. I use it every day. This isn't a matter of an ideological battle against AI, it's a matter of fraudulent misrepresentation. This wouldn't be a discussion if the author themselves hadn't claimed what they had, so I don't see why the community should be barred from calling that out. Why bother having curious discussions about this book when they are blatantly lying about what is present…
To clarify there is no evidence of any lying or fraud. So far all we have evidence of is HN commenters assuming bad faith and engaging in linguistic phrenology.
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To clarify there is no evidence of any lying or fraud. So far all we have evidence of is HN commenters assuming bad faith and engaging in linguistic phrenology.
There is evidence, it's circumstantial, but there's never going to be 100% proof. And that's the point, that's why community detection is the best weapon we have against such efforts.
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> 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.
Humans get things wrong too. Quality prose usually only becomes that after many reviews.