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The Zig project's rationale for their anti-AI contribution policy

simonwillison.net

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Re: The Zig project's rationale for their anti-AI contribution policy

#251

Post by simonw »

darkstarsys wrote: post #192

As a heavy AI-assisted open source code creator (and someone with 40+ years of dev experience), this seems wrong-headed to me. I think it is an excellent policy, as they say, to "value contributors over their contributions," but this policy excludes all potential contributors who use the latest tools. It will eventually doom zig to a smaller "artisanal" pool of contributors, rather than welcoming newbies and helping…

Presumably Zig are OK with that. For their particular project - a brand new programming language and compiler - a small pool of artisanal developers is likely preferable to a large pool of LLM-assisted developers who don't have as deep an understanding of how everything works.

There are plenty of less stringent projects for people who to get better at open source to contribute to.

Re: The Zig project's rationale for their anti-AI contribution policy

#252

Post by ori_b »

vehemenz wrote: post #226
dgellow wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I generally do have that mindset, but over the past 1y of Claude code I do notice that I’m clearly losing my understanding of the internals of projects. I do review LLM generated code, understand it, no problem reading/following through. But then someone asks me a question, and I’m like… wait, I actually don’t know. I remember the instructions I gave and reviewing the code but don’t actually have a fine-details model…

I've had this issue too, and I feel it was an important lesson—kind of like the first time getting a hangover. On the other hand, LLM-generated code comments better than I do, so given a long enough time horizon, it could be more understandable at a later time than code I've written myself (we've all had the experience of forgetting how things work).

It's not. Invariably, the code is locally fine and globally nonsense.

Re: The Zig project's rationale for their anti-AI contribution policy

#254

Post by dominotw »

discreteevent wrote: post #110
feverzsj wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty much sums up the LLM fanbase.

I don't think it's the complete fanbase. However, there are lots of people in the world who live their whole life by vibing. It's a viable way to live and sometimes it's the only way to live. But they have a very loose relationship with truth and reason. Programming was a domain that filtered out those people because they found it hard to succeed at it. LLM's have changed that and it's a huge problem. It's hard to kn…

wouldnt llm do all the tasks that determistic programs are doing. like chatgpt files taxes for you instead of using turbotax.

Re: The Zig project's rationale for their anti-AI contribution policy

#255

Post by fibonacci_man »

mexicocitinluez wrote: post #200
tovej wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An LLM most definitely cannot spit out robust tests or thorough documentation. It can spit out some tests or some documentation, but they will not cover the user perspective or edge cases unless those are already documented somewhere. That's verified by both experience and just thinking about it for two seconds. The sanding down you refer to is what generates those tests and documentation.

> but they will not cover the user perspective or edge cases unless those are already documented somewhere Are you suggesting that LLM's can't test for people who use screen readers? Keyboard only users? Slow network requests? You're acting like the issues an app faces are so bespoke to the actual app itself (and have absolutely no relation to existing problems in this space) that an LLM couldn't possibly cover it. A…

I can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic or not

Re: The Zig project's rationale for their anti-AI contribution policy

#256

Post by renticulous »

PunchyHamster wrote: post #230
JackC wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"They may speed up the good programmers a little, but those people were able to program anyway without LLMs." I don't think this is realistic. I'm a good programmer, and it speeds up my work a lot , from "make sense of this 10 repo project I haven't worked on recently" to "for this next step I need a vpn multiplexer written in a language I don't use" to, yeah, "this 10k line patch lets me see parts of design space we…

> to "for this next step I need a vpn multiplexer written in a language I don't use" but that acceleration is exactly because you're not good at that language

Can't we reach a compromise where proven track record of good use of LLM by a contributor or a company (eg. Bun) be pre-approved or entertained? Blanket ban on a new technology shouldn't be the default option.

Re: The Zig project's rationale for their anti-AI contribution policy

#259

Post by simonw »

fg137 wrote: post #190
slopinthebag wrote: post #36

Very convenient of Mr. Willison to omit the fact that Bun's upstream changes are total garbage and would not be upstreamed regardless of any policies, omitting LLM generated code or not, since they are, as a zig core team member articulated in a classier way, shite.

I have learned to take always Willison's words with a giant grain of salt, despite how popular those articles are here.

How can I do better?

Re: The Zig project's rationale for their anti-AI contribution policy

#260

Post by dalmo3 »

kunley wrote: post #105
adrian_b wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that reply provides convincing arguments for not merging the Bun fork, as it interferes with Zig's own roadmap for achieving even better results, while continuing to improve the whole language.

Not only this, but also: Bun's fork will exhibit indeterministic behavior.

As if that was a bad thing in 2026!
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