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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

#551

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to measure the language used by the productivity of the desired outcome. I'd encourage you to survey the ratio of comments talking about the problems with github's very broken CI and UX, with how many people expressed an objection to the language and words used in the announcement. Failure to convey ideas with tact and respect, is demonstrably more counter productive. I assume you'll choose to dismiss tho…

Why do you consider that a useful metric? Hit dogs holler, after all.

If you are hitting the dog unprovoked don’t be shocked if it bites you.

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

#552
post #532

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there? I am not playing games! What is the anger that arises from you when one you care for is hurt because of some violence or injustice? Is that not an expression of love? What is that particular anger you can feel towards a romantic life partner of many years? One that can only be based in an already profound intimacy, in some deep fidelity? Don't you feel that same love you have always felt for them, but in a…

Of course there is a difference between anger and love. Either one can be present without the other, and that they can sometimes mix and play off each other does not change that they are different. You are playing around with words to pretend they are the same. That's very poetic and dramatic, but I hope you realize that love is not the same as anger, and that neither truly requires the other. If done right, love can…

Sure ok. I do think its ultimately just semantic. That is: if you start from the definition of love as a state we can, like, get into or not, if it is more something we do rather than experience, then sure, the state of anger and the state of love are different, and the latter definitely seems more preferable. I only get "dramatic" here insofar as I feel like thats just kind of an unsatisfying definition! Like, love songs are sometimes sad songs too. I just reject this psychological/behavioral starting point and offer that what we call "love" should be a broader, deeper, messier thing is all.

But this is really heady woowoo stuff at this point, and its quite ok to disagree on stuff of this sort! I understand you will probably continue to dismiss all this as sophistry or playing with words or whatever, but know either way that I do recognize and respect your point here! It can probably be seen as a choice: love can be a desirable state or a dramatic raison d'etre. For the former, you're probably a pretty happy monk/stoic type, for the other, you're more like the classic Romantic, the artist, etc.

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

#553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never understood that either. If someone was wrong and bad, and now they're trying to do right and good, we need to celebrate that. Not just because that's awesome in itself, but also to give the opportunity and incentives for others in the future to do better. If everyone is always bad regardless if they're trying to change, what incentives would they have from changing at all? It doesn't make any sense.

The incentive is less about morals and very much about self-preservation. With online mobs, when the target shows any sort of regret there is blood in the water and the sharks feast. It sometimes turns into a very public form of struggle session for the person under scrutiny. Besides avoiding the faux pas in the first place, one well-tested mitigation is to be absolutely unapologetic and wait for the storm to blow ov…

I think that real honesty works well as long as you have the character to stand up for yourself. An unflinchingly honest self-assessment which shows that you understand the error and rectified it is almost always the path to take.

Acknowledgement of mistakes do not invoke much of a mob reaction unless there is wavering, self-pity, or appeals for leniency. Self-preservation should be assumed and not set as a goal -- once you appear to be doing anything that can be thought of as covering up or minimizing or blaming others, the mob will latch on to that and you get no consideration from then on.

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

#554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It just seems like someone got upset about something they can't articulate Dunno, they don't play well to the HN crowd I thought it was pretty clear what their pain points with GitHub were.

ICE, Actions, and Microsoft, not a single complaint about git itself. All I see is they have CI issues coupled with dumbest anti AI policy that is impossible for them to enforce. Giving up your donations and losing half your community doesn't seem like an intelligent move when all you had to do is update your CI.

> ICE, Actions, and Microsoft, not a single complaint about git itself

Codeberg is also a Git-based project host. It doesn't even support other repo types. Why would you be expecting the latter?

If a project announcement or article headline says someone/something is quitting or leaving GitHub, it makes a lot of sense to assume that their issue is with GitHub (and in this case, it would be an assumption they'd be right about).

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

#555

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…

Anger is a mind killer. Build software out of love. Love for engineering, innovation, creation, and love of working with people who feel the same way.

I would contend that anger is the only thing that drives any kind of progress. An abundance of love means accepting, adjusting, and forgiving, which are antithetical to systemic change.

You need that middle-finger-to-everyone, "let me show you how it's really done" energy to build anything meaningful. Pretty much all the great builders I can think of in tech history are/were deeply angry people.

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

#556

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…

Whatever the wording, what they are writing truly shows on Github. There are many things wrong with its code display ... All of which used to work fine or were not added in this buggy state in the first place. Code folding is buggy. Have some functions that have inner functions or other foldable stuff like classes with methods and inside the method maybe some inner function? It will only show folding buttons sporadic…

Do people actually use GitHub to inspect code? I figure for anything that's not a 1-second lookup, I might as well just do at least a shallow clone of the repo, and look through it with my own personally-tailored editor instead.

Not to say their implementation doesn't suck. I just wouldn't know because even a non-buggy one would probably still be a subpar experience.

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

#557

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ICE, Actions, and Microsoft, not a single complaint about git itself. All I see is they have CI issues coupled with dumbest anti AI policy that is impossible for them to enforce. Giving up your donations and losing half your community doesn't seem like an intelligent move when all you had to do is update your CI.

ICE, Actions, and Microsoft, not a single complaint about git itself. … all you had to do is update your CI Updating your CI only addresses one of the issues you raised, and you forgot about the front-end complaints which also wouldn't be addressed by "updating your CI".

It's all faux outrage, they didn't give a shit about ICE or MSFT until they could use it as a rage bait prop.

Imagine being a slave to any SCM UI when cli tools and desktop clients have existed for ages not to mention integration into nearly every IDE. Also, what they're describing "random" workflows is classic ci build machine went offline and came back later.

Regardless, best of luck to them, hopefully they don't run into any more "monkeys", that would be terrible for them.

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

#558

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anger is a mind killer. Build software out of love. Love for engineering, innovation, creation, and love of working with people who feel the same way.

I would contend that anger is the only thing that drives any kind of progress. An abundance of love means accepting, adjusting, and forgiving, which are antithetical to systemic change. You need that middle-finger-to-everyone, "let me show you how it's really done" energy to build anything meaningful. Pretty much all the great builders I can think of in tech history are/were deeply angry people.

[dead]

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

#559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He hid the comments he made and apologized to the Zig community for his behavior. He never apologized to the people he harmed (the 'losers' at GitHub in this context).

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

#560

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's because when people do a 180 due to public pressure, it's hard to know to what degree they changed their mind and to what degree they are just lying about what is on their mind.

Toning down aggressive phrasing is not "doing a 180", calling the change from "only losers left at GitHub" to "the engineering excellence has left" lying seems disingenuous.

I was responding to the general sentiment of:

> I often find we don't appreciate enough people accepting their failures and changing their mind. For some reason I see the opposite: people respecting those who "stick to their guns" or double down when something is clearly wrong.

Not this specific situation.

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