Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Open-source Zig book

zigbook.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

311–320 of 426 posts

Re: Open-source Zig book

#311

Post by Ygg2 »

GuB-42 wrote: post #296
sgt wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and isn't suitable for any of the domains where Rust excels. That's a pretty bold claim since Zig is specifically designed for systems programming, low level stuff, network services, databases (think Tigerbeetle). It's not memory safe like Rust is, but it comes with constructs that make it simple to build largely memory safe programs.

Rust is not designed for low level system programming / embedded systems like Zig is. It is designed to make a browser and software that share requirements with making a browser. There is some overlap but that's still different. The Zig approach to memory safety is to make everything explicit, it is good in a constrained environment typical of embedded programming. The Rust approach is the opposite, you don't really…

> Rust is not designed for low level system programming / embedded systems like Zig is.

Pray tell, with Rust already being used in kernels, drivers, and embedded what makes Zig better suited for low-level systems?

More chance to explode a UB in your hand? For that, there is C.

Re: Open-source Zig book

#312

Post by lenkite »

"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."

Such a bald-faced and utterly disgusting lie. The introduction itself ticks every single flag of AI generated slop. AI is trained well on corporate marketing brochures.

Re: Open-source Zig book

#313

Post by bool3max »

rudedogg wrote: post #281

I submitted this and unfortunately it is likely AI generated. The authors github history suggests it at the very least, along with seemingly misunderstanding a reference to a Zig language feature (labeled blocks - https://zig.guide/language-basics/labelled-blocks/ ) in the project issues ( https://github.com/zigbook/zigbook/issues/4 ). I’m not sure how much value is to be had here, and it’s unfortunate the author was…

We really are in the trenches. How is this garbage #1 on the front page of *HN* right now?

Even if it was totally legitimate, the "landing page" (its design) and the headline ("Learning Zig is not just about adding a language to your resume. It is about fundamentally changing how you think about software."?????) should discredit it immediately.

Re: Open-source Zig book

#314

Post by Ygg2 »

pjmlp wrote: post #284
simonask wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know man, Rust's borrowing semantics are pretty new under the sun, and actually do change the way you think about software. It's a pretty momentous paradigm shift. Zig is nice too, but it's not that.

Kind of, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclone_(programming_language) What it has achieved is making affine types something mainstream developers would care about.

That kind of is a bit load bearing. The differences are pretty huge. Plus, borrow checker is nowhere to be found. Cyclone is more C with a few tweaks (tagged unions, generics, regions, etc.).

Re: Open-source Zig book

#315

Post by pron »

poly2it wrote: post #195

> Learning Zig is not just about adding a language to your resume. It is about fundamentally changing how you think about software. I'm not sure what they expect, but to me Zig looks very much like C with a modern standard lib and slightly different syntax. This isn't groundbreaking, not a thought paradigm which should be that novel to most system engineers like for example OCaml could be. Stuff like this alienates p…

Zig is so novel that it's hard to find any language like it. Its similarity to C is superficial. AFAIK, it is the first language ever to rely on partial evaluation so extensively. Of course, partial evaluation itself is not new at all, but neither were touchscreens when the iPhone came out. The point wasn't that it had a touchscreen, but that it had almost nothing but. The manner and extent of Zig's use of partial evaluation are unprecedented. I have nothing against OCaml, but it is a variant of ML, a 1970s language, that many undergrads were taught at university in the nineties.

I'm not saying everyone should like Zig, but its design is revolutionary:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45852774

Re: Open-source Zig book

#316

Post by lenkite »

rudedogg wrote: post #281

I submitted this and unfortunately it is likely AI generated. The authors github history suggests it at the very least, along with seemingly misunderstanding a reference to a Zig language feature (labeled blocks - https://zig.guide/language-basics/labelled-blocks/ ) in the project issues ( https://github.com/zigbook/zigbook/issues/4 ). I’m not sure how much value is to be had here, and it’s unfortunate the author was…

Created https://github.com/zigbook/zigbook/issues/18

Re: Open-source Zig book

#317

Post by toinewx »

PaulRobinson wrote: post #309
rudedogg wrote: post #281

I submitted this and unfortunately it is likely AI generated. The authors github history suggests it at the very least, along with seemingly misunderstanding a reference to a Zig language feature (labeled blocks - https://zig.guide/language-basics/labelled-blocks/ ) in the project issues ( https://github.com/zigbook/zigbook/issues/4 ). I’m not sure how much value is to be had here, and it’s unfortunate the author was…

I'd love it if we can stop the "Oh, this might be AI, so it's probably crap" thing that has taken over HN recently. 1. There is no evidence this is AI generated. The author claims it wasn't, and on the specific issue you cite, he explains why he's struggling with understanding it, even if the answer is "obvious" to most people here. 2. Even if it were AI generated, that does not automatically make it worthless. In fa…

> 1. There is no evidence this is AI generated. The author claims it wasn't, and on the specific issue you cite, he explains why he's struggling with understanding it, even if the answer is "obvious" to most people here.

There is, actually, You may copy the introduction to Pangram and it will say 100% AI generated.

Re: Open-source Zig book

#318

Post by PaulRobinson »

cryptocod3 wrote: post #301
rudedogg wrote: post #281

I submitted this and unfortunately it is likely AI generated. The authors github history suggests it at the very least, along with seemingly misunderstanding a reference to a Zig language feature (labeled blocks - https://zig.guide/language-basics/labelled-blocks/ ) in the project issues ( https://github.com/zigbook/zigbook/issues/4 ). I’m not sure how much value is to be had here, and it’s unfortunate the author was…

> if there are hallucinations Plenty. I assumed that the code examples had been cleaned up manually, so instead I looked at a few random "Caveats, alternatives, edge cases" sections. These contain errors typically made by LLMs, such as suggesting to use features that doesn't exist (std.mem.terminated), are non-public (argvToScriptCommandLineWindows) or removed (std.BoundedArray). These sections also surfaces irreleva…

This looks like more data towards the "LLMs were involved" side of the argument, but as my other comment pointed out, that might not be an issue.

We're used to errata and fixing up stuff produced by humans, so if we can fix this resource, it might actually be valuable and more useful than anything that existed before it. Maybe.

One of my things with AI is that if we assume it is there to replace humans, we are always going to find it disappointing. If we use it as a tool to augment, we might find it very useful.

A colleague used to describe it (long before GenAI, when we were talking about technology automation more generally) as following: "we're not trying to build a super intelligent killer robot to replace Deidre in accounts. Deidre knows things. We just want to give her better tools".

So, it seems like this needs some editing, but it still has value if we want it to have value. I'd rather this was fixed than thrown away (I'm biased, I want to learn systems programming in zig and want a good resource to do so), and yes the author should have been more upfront about it, and asked for reviewers, but we have it now. What to do?

Re: Open-source Zig book

#319

Post by PaulRobinson »

toinewx wrote: post #317
PaulRobinson wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd love it if we can stop the "Oh, this might be AI, so it's probably crap" thing that has taken over HN recently. 1. There is no evidence this is AI generated. The author claims it wasn't, and on the specific issue you cite, he explains why he's struggling with understanding it, even if the answer is "obvious" to most people here. 2. Even if it were AI generated, that does not automatically make it worthless. In fa…

> 1. There is no evidence this is AI generated. The author claims it wasn't, and on the specific issue you cite, he explains why he's struggling with understanding it, even if the answer is "obvious" to most people here. There is, actually, You may copy the introduction to Pangram and it will say 100% AI generated.

That's not evidence, at least not evidence that would stand up to a peer review if the author were to refute it.

Re: Open-source Zig book

#320

Post by lenkite »

ropable wrote: post #192
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)

An awful lot of commenters are convinced that it's AI-generated, despite explicit statements to the contrary. Maybe they're wrong, maybe they're right, but none of them currently have any proof stronger than vibes. It's like everyone has gaslit themselves into thinking that humans can't write well-structured neutral-tone docs any more.

Many people have already shown the hallucinated apis that is much stronger evidence than your "vibes".

I suppose the author may have deliberately added the "No AI assistance" notice - making sure all the hallucinated bugs are found via outraged developers raising tickets. Without that people may not even have bothered.

Post reply on HN