Zig quits GitHub, says Microsoft's AI obsession has ruined the service • Hacker News Board

Re: Zig quits GitHub, says Microsoft's AI obsession has ruined the service

#361

Post by ethin » Wed, Dec 03, 2025, 4:01 PM UTC

rzwitserloot wrote: post #340

styanax wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the previous HN article, I recall many a comment talking about how they should change this, leave the politics/negative juju out because it was a bad look for the Zig community. It would appear they listened to that feedback, swallowed their ego/pride and did what was best for the Zig community with these edits. I commend them for their actions in doing what's best for the community at the cost of some personal me…

There is utility in indicating how surprised / concerned you are at a certain process or event. We can flatten out all communication and boil everything down to an extremely neutral "up", "down", and "nailed it to exacting precision". I find the fact that this painting has been hung crooked by 0.00001º: down I find torture and mass murder: down Clearly this is a ridiculous state of affairs. There's more gradations av…

If I could upvote you, I would. I have never liked the mob of people that think we should all be super diplomatic corpospeakers who hedge everything and who think that not doing so is "offensive" or "unprofessional". I definitely didn't think anything was wrong with the original sentences or word usage, because it wasn't aimed at any specific individual with the deliberate intent of being offensive, but was aimed at Microsoft itself. And even if the intent was to be offensive, well, on the internet your always going to offend someone. You could be super nice and say all the right words and someone would still find a way to be offended by it. And were these circumstances ordinary, I would call out the word usage as well, because it would be uncalled for. But given all the evidence that the original points at, it's rather hard to say that GitHub didn't deserve it. And it is also rather difficult for me to see how this wasn't the time or place for such language. Sometimes the only way to get your point across is to be "unprofessional" (whatever that means these days).

Re: Zig quits GitHub, says Microsoft's AI obsession has ruined the service

#362

Post by soiltype » Wed, Dec 03, 2025, 4:03 PM UTC

arccy wrote: post #262

brushfoot wrote: post #139

The edit history of the announcement is quite a ride: > [2025-11-27T02:10:07Z] it’s abundantly clear that the talented folks who used to work on the product have moved on to bigger and better things, with the remaining losers eager to inflict some kind of bloated, buggy JavaScript framework on us in the name of progress [1] > [2025-11-27T14:04:47Z] it’s abundantly clear that the talented folks who used to work on the…

this Corporate Americanism is of only positivity and fake smiles is exactly how we end up with enshittified products, because no one is ever called out for it. If the feedback is too soft, it just gets swept under the rug. we need less self censorship, not more.

No, the edits are better. The original message made unwarranted assumptions, and used intentionally inaccurate language. That's objectively bad communication.

It's not a binary choice between insults (escalates conflict, destabilizes rational decision making) vs hiding your opinions. That's what the word tact is for. It's simply, quite literally, a skill issue if someone can't find a middle ground between those two failure modes.

Re: Zig quits GitHub, says Microsoft's AI obsession has ruined the service

#363

Post by WolfeReader » Wed, Dec 03, 2025, 4:04 PM UTC

QuadrupleA wrote: post #358

Probably a good time to mention fossil, an excellent SCM from the makers of SQLite with a number of github-like features built-in: https://fossil-scm.org/ Single ~6mb executable, blazing fast. I've been a happy user for years.

Fossil is great. I'd encourage anyone to try it out on their next personal project.

Re: Zig quits GitHub, says Microsoft's AI obsession has ruined the service

#364

Post by kragen » Wed, Dec 03, 2025, 4:05 PM UTC

watwut wrote: post #321

kragen wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I see it, someone who "listened to that feedback, swallowed their ego/pride" would include a note at the end of the post about the edits. Admitting you were wrong requires not erasing the evidence of what you said. (He did post a kind of vague apology in https://ziggit.dev/t/migrating-from-github-to-codeberg-zig-p... , but it's ambiguous enough that anyone who was offended is free to read it as either retracting t…

No evidence was erased as the evidence exists.

You mean, on a third-party website that currently happens to have a capture of the page outside of the Zig team's control, one which can go down at any time?

Re: Zig quits GitHub, says Microsoft's AI obsession has ruined the service

#365

Post by phplovesong » Wed, Dec 03, 2025, 4:07 PM UTC

And now a huge Zig user is purchased by an AI company. The tale as old as time.

Re: Zig quits GitHub, says Microsoft's AI obsession has ruined the service

#366

Post by WolfeReader » Wed, Dec 03, 2025, 4:08 PM UTC

rprend wrote: post #348

themgt wrote: post #19

I have sympathy for some of the GitHub complaints. otoh just went to try to signup for Codeberg and it's down ... 95% uptime over the last 2 weeks? https://status.codeberg.org/status/codeberg

Average big tech alternative. Doesn’t solve your problems, doesn’t scale, terrible UX, but at least it’s run by fanatics.

Forgejo does solve my problems, doesn't scale yet (I am really looking forward to ForgeFed), has fine UX, and at least it's run by people who care.

Re: Zig quits GitHub, says Microsoft's AI obsession has ruined the service

#367

Post by jjmarr » Wed, Dec 03, 2025, 4:08 PM UTC

philwelch wrote: post #290

testdelacc1 wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even Linus doesn’t act that way anymore. Here’s him a few years ago: > This week people in our community confronted me about my lifetime of not understanding emotions. My flippant attacks in emails have been both unprofessional and uncalled for. > Especially at times when I made it personal. In my quest for a better patch, this made sense to me. I know now this was not OK and I am truly sorry. The above is basically…

Yeah, that didn’t last. https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/CAHk-=wjLCqUUWd8DzG+xsOn-yVL0Q=...

> And sending a big pull request the day before the merge window closes in the hope that I'm too busy to care is not a winning strategy.

I wish I could say this.

But unfortunately delaying your big PR until it's affecting schedule is a good way to dodge review.

Re: Zig quits GitHub, says Microsoft's AI obsession has ruined the service

#368

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Dec 03, 2025, 4:09 PM UTC

mittermayr wrote: post #110

Additional note on Codeberg, which I think is great as a project, but I got curious on what infrastructure they are running on and how reliable this would be for larger corporate repos. Nov 22, 2025 https://blog.codeberg.org/letter-from-codeberg-onwards-and-u... Quotes from their website: Infrastructure status [...] We are running on 3 servers, one Gigabyte and 2 Dell servers (R730 and R740). Here's their current har…

[deleted]

Re: Zig quits GitHub, says Microsoft's AI obsession has ruined the service

#369

Post by infecto » Wed, Dec 03, 2025, 4:09 PM UTC

IgorPartola wrote: post #352

infecto wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adults don’t call people losers or monkeys in social media. I am not passing judgement, it is simply not acceptable.

Really? You can’t think of any circumstances when it would be appropriate? More to the point, if someone does it once and then stops, should we exclude this person from society forever? Remember that only the Siths deal in absolutes.

Zero clue what your point is so please help me understand.

I was agreeing with your stance and adding my own anecdote that it’s a turnoff with the way those posts were originally formatted. Not people I would want to work with. If you do that’s fine. This is not star wars and simply my own choice as it’s everyone else.

I also cannot think of a time in my adult life I wanted to call out a group of people as losers or monkeys i n public.

Re: Zig quits GitHub, says Microsoft's AI obsession has ruined the service

#370

Post by justin66 » Wed, Dec 03, 2025, 4:09 PM UTC

esafak wrote: post #320

justin66 wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Things like number of stars on a repository, number of forks, number of issues answered, number of followers for an account. All these things are powerful indicators of quality Hahahahahahahahahahahaha...

OK, indicators of interest. Would you bet on a project nobody cares about?

I guess if I viewed software engineering merely as a placing of bets, I would not, but that's the center of the disagreement here. I'm not trying to be a dick (okay maybe a little sue me), the grandparent comment mentioned "software engineering."

I can refer you to some github repositories with a low number of stars that are of extraordinarily high quality, and similarly, some shitty software with lots of stars. But I'm sure you get the point.