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Open-source Zig book

zigbook.net

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Re: Open-source Zig book

#121

Post by mikepurvis »

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.

Even for content that isn’t directly composed by llm, I bet there’d be value in an alerting system that could ingest your docs and code+commits and flag places where behaviour referenced by docs has changed and may need to be updated.

This kind of “workflow” llm use has the potential to deliver a lot of value even to a scenario where the final product is human-composed.

Re: Open-source Zig book

#122

Post by maxbond »

ModernMech wrote: post #118
ants_everywhere wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

(Nitpick: it's actually direct evidence, not circumstantial evidence. I think you mean it isn't conclusive evidence. Circumstantial evidence is evidence that requires an additional inference, like the accused being placed at the scene of the crime implying they may have been the perpetrator. But stylometry doesn't require any additional inference, it's just not foolproof.)

Re: Open-source Zig book

#123

Post by ants_everywhere »

gamegoblin wrote: post #17
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…

Pangram[1] flags the introduction as totally AI-written, which I also suspected for the same reasons you did [1] one of the only AI detectors that actually works, 99.9% accuracy, 0.1% false positive

Keep in mind that pangram flags many hand-written things as AI.

> I just ran excerpts from two unpublished science fiction / speculative fiction short stories through it. Both came back as ai with 99.9% confidence. Both stories were written in 2013.

> I've been doing some extensive testing in the last 24 hours and I can confidently say that I believe the 1 in 10,000 rate is bullshit. I've been an author for over a decade and have dozens of books at hand that I can throw at this from years prior to AI even existing in anywhere close to its current capacity. Most of the time, that content is detected as AI-created, even when it's not.

> Pangram is saying EVERYTHING I have hand written for school is AI. I've had to rewrite my paper four times already and it still says 99.9% AI even though I didn't even use AI for the research.

> I've written an overview of a project plan based on a brief and, after reading an article on AI detection, I thought it would be interesting to run it through AI detection sites to see where my writing winds up. All of them, with the exception of Pangram, flagged the writing as 100% written by a human. Pangram has "99% confidence" of it being written by AI.

I generally don't give startups my contact info, but if folks don't mind doing so, I recommend running pangram on some of their polished hand written stuff.

https://www.reddit.com/r/teachingresources/comments/1icnren/...

Re: Open-source Zig book

#124

Post by wild_egg »

fifhtbtbf wrote: post #102
ropable wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The Uncanny Valley of prose.

Re: Open-source Zig book

#125

Post by jesseb34r »

This source is really hard to trust. AI or not, the author has done no work to really establish epistemological reliability and transparency. The entire book was published at once with no history, no evidence of the improvement and iteration it takes to create quality work, and no reference as to the creative process or collaborators or anything. And on top of that, the author does not seem to really have any other presence or history in the community. I love Zig, and have wanted more quality learning materials to exist. This, unfortunately, does not seem to be it.

Re: Open-source Zig book

#126

Post by dilap »

BlackjackCF wrote: post #86
shuraman7 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's not only the size - it was pushed all at once, anonymously, using text that highly resembles that of an AI. I still think that some of the text is AI generated. perhaps not the code, but the wording of the text just reeks of AI

Can you provide some examples where the text reeks of AI?

I read the first few paragraphs. Very much reads like LLM slop to me...

E.g., "Zig takes a different path. It reveals complexity—and then gives you the tools to master it."

If we had a reliable oracle, I would happily bet a $K on significant LLM authorship.

Re: Open-source Zig book

#127

Post by cycomanic »

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…

These posts are getting old.

I had a discussion on some other submission a couple of weeks back, where several people were arguing "it's obviously AI generated" (the style btw was completely different to this, quite a few explicitives...). When I put the the text in 5 random AI detectors the argument who except for one (which said mixed, 10% AI or so) all said 100% human I was being down voted and the argument became "AI detection tools can detect AI" but somehow the people claim there are 100% clear telltale signs which says it's AI (why those detection tools can detect them is baffling to me).

I have the feeling that the whole "it's AI" stick has become a synonym for I don't like this writing style.

It really does not add to the discussion. If people would post immediately "there's spelling mistakes this is rubbish", they would rightfully get down voted, but somehow saying "it's AI" is acceptable. Would the book be any more or less useful if somebody used AI for writing it? So what is your point?

Re: Open-source Zig book

#128

Post by charlie90 »

>Learning Zig is not just about adding a language to your resume. It is about fundamentally changing how you think about software.

Zig is just C with a marketing push. Most developers already know C.

Re: Open-source Zig book

#129

Post by cycomanic »

gassi wrote: post #110
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.

But all those "it's AI posts" are about the prose and "style", not the actual content. So even if (and that is a big if) the text was written using the help of AI (and there are many valid reasons to use it, e.g. if you're not a native speaker) that does not mean the content was written from AI and thus contains AI mistakes.

If it was so obviously written by AI then finding those mistakes should be easy?

Re: Open-source Zig book

#130

Post by ncgl »

jesseb34r wrote: post #125

This source is really hard to trust. AI or not, the author has done no work to really establish epistemological reliability and transparency. The entire book was published at once with no history, no evidence of the improvement and iteration it takes to create quality work, and no reference as to the creative process or collaborators or anything. And on top of that, the author does not seem to really have any other p…

How do you feel about regular books, whose iterations and edits you dont see?
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