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

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

#381

Post by radlad »

latexr wrote: post #338
ants_everywhere wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I say this as someone who has been cautioning about Microsoft's ownership of GitHub for years now... but the Zig community has been high drama lately. I thought the Rust community had done themselves a disservice with their high tolerance of drama, but lately Zig seems to me to be more drama than even Rust. I was saddened to see how they ganged up to bully the author of the Zig book. The book author, as far as I coul…

> seems like a possibly immature teenager. What makes you say that? Couldn’t it be an immature adult? > because they have a suspicion you might use AI Was that the reason? From what I remember (which could definitely be incomplete information) the complaint was that they were clearly using AI while claiming no AI had been used , stole code from another project while claiming it was their own, refused to add credit wh…

I just want to point out that even if you are correct, as a Zig outsider, none of this is obvious. The situation just looks bad.

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

#382

Post by immibis »

chuckadams wrote: post #297
IgorPartola wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the Reddit mobile website team might be the exception to that. What they make is a particular brand of unusable and from what I remember there is evidence of them talking about how that was intentional.

Reddit is trying to steer everyone into using their mobile app, which schlorps up as much personal data as it possibly can. I normally don’t go in for the whole mustache twirling thing, but given their previous actions in shutting down all third party apps, I’m fine in this case with accusing them of outright malice.

I think they recently banned people from creating their own API keys, which is a thing that people were doing to enter into their third party apps to bypass the ban - every copy of the app was registered as a single-user app. Now if you want to make any app or bot, you either screen-scrape, steal an API key, or get the approval of Reddit management.

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

#383

Post by intalentive »

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…

Kelly’s indignant attitude and commitment to “engineering excellence” suggest a bright future for Zig. It’s good to see the leader of a technical project get angry about mediocrity.

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

#384

Post by bit1993 »

ToucanLoucan wrote: post #350
ryukoposting wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are the only reasons I use GitHub. The familiarity to students and non-developers is also a plus. I have no idea what the parent comment is talking about a "well-formed CI system." GitHub Actions is easily the worst CI tool I've ever used. There are no core features of GitHub that haven't been replicated by GitLab at this point, and in my estimation GitLab did all of it better. But, if I put something on GitLab…

And this is the core problem with the modern platform internet. One victor (or a handful) take the lead in a given niche, and it becomes impossible to get away from them without great personal cost, literal, moral, or labor, and usually a combo of all three. And then that company has absolutely no motivation at all to prioritize the quality of the product, merely to extract all the value from the user-base as possibl…

This is a socio-economic problem, it can happen with non internet platforms too. Its why people end up living in cities for example. Any system that has addresses, accounts or any form of identity has the potential for strong network effects.

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

#385

Post by FuriouslyAdrift »

bit1993 wrote: post #119
mkornaukhov wrote: post #39

IMHO, the main advantage of github is that it is an ecosystem. This is a well-thought-out Swiss knife: a pioneering (but no longer new) PR system, convenient issues, as well as a well-formed CI system with many developed actions and free runners. In addition, it is best to use code navigation simply in a web browser. You write code, and almost everything works effortlessly. Having a sponsorship system is also great,…

I don't agree with this at all. I think the reason Github is so prominent is the social network aspects it has built around Git, which created strong network effects that most developers are unwilling to part with. Maintainers don't want to loose their stars and the users don't want to loose the collective "audit" by the github users. Things like number of stars on a repository, number of forks, number of issues answ…

Most people would be fine with Forgejo on Codeberg (or self hosted).

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

#386

Post by w0m »

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…

was github ever ~not kinda buggy?

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

#387

Post by latexr »

radlad wrote: post #381
latexr wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> seems like a possibly immature teenager. What makes you say that? Couldn’t it be an immature adult? > because they have a suspicion you might use AI Was that the reason? From what I remember (which could definitely be incomplete information) the complaint was that they were clearly using AI while claiming no AI had been used , stole code from another project while claiming it was their own, refused to add credit wh…

I just want to point out that even if you are correct, as a Zig outsider, none of this is obvious. The situation just looks bad.

I’m a Zig outsider. I gathered the context from reading the conversation around it, most of it posted to HN. Which is why I also pointed out I may have incomplete information.

If one looks past the immediate surface, which is a prerequisite to form an informed opinion, Zigbook is the one who clearly looks bad. The website is no longer up, even, now showing a DMCA notice.

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

#388

Post by vzaliva »

Let me be blunt: this looks like a tantrum. Bugs exist, and they're sometimes fixed more slowly than we'd like, but given the size of the GitHub ecosystem this is probably just one of many outstanding bugs. Blaming AI is baseless - not that it couldn't be true, but the conclusion seems to be drawn from a single issue.

What does this mean for the Zig project? I haven't heard of Codeberg, they may be great, but for a popular open-source project I'd expect a proper discussion before deciding to move or weighing the pros and cons of different hosting options. From what I'm hearing, Zig is technically excellent but seems to lack level‑headed, mature leadership. That's not unique: many open‑source projects started by brilliant engineers struggle as they grow and need a new leadership structure. That transition can be painful and could even harm adoption.

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

#389

Post by boothby »

fragmede wrote: post #326
snickerbockers wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI witch-hunts are definitely a problem. The only tell you can actually rely on is when the AI says something so incredibly stupid that it not only fails to understand what it is talking about but the very meaning of words themselves. Eg,metaphors that make no sense or fail to contribute any meaningful insight or extrenely cliched phrases ("it was a dark and stormy night...") used seriously rather than for self-depre…

which is unfortunate, because pre-AI, "but what at first seemed to be an innocent night of harmless serial murder quickly turned to something sinister." would just be a funny bit of writing.

Straight from a noir detective pulp, even.

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

#390

Post by krashidov »

MiddleEndian wrote: post #336
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…

More and more people should call out bloated buggy JS frameworks lol

Isn't github a rails app that heavily uses server side rendering?
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