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Zpdf: PDF text extraction in Zig

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Re: Zpdf: PDF text extraction in Zig

#71

Post by mpeg »

littlestymaar wrote: post #61
chanbam wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If he made something legitimately useful, who cares how?

It seems that he didn't even test it before submitting though… The author has created 30 new projects on github, in half a dozen different programming language, over the past month alone, and he also happen to have an LLM-generated blog. I think it's fair to say it's not “legitimately useful” except as a way for the author to fill his resume as he's looking for a job. This kind of behavior is toxic.

Exactly this, I like to give the benefit of the doubt to people but pushing huge chunks of code this quickly shows the whole thing is vibe coded

I actually don’t mind LLM generated code when it’s been manually reviewed, but this and a quick look through other submissions makes me realise the author is simply trying to pad their resume with OSS projects. Respect the hustle, but it shows a lack of respect for other’s time to then submit it to show HN

Re: Zpdf: PDF text extraction in Zig

#72

Post by lulzx »

mpeg wrote: post #71
littlestymaar wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems that he didn't even test it before submitting though… The author has created 30 new projects on github, in half a dozen different programming language, over the past month alone, and he also happen to have an LLM-generated blog. I think it's fair to say it's not “legitimately useful” except as a way for the author to fill his resume as he's looking for a job. This kind of behavior is toxic.

Exactly this, I like to give the benefit of the doubt to people but pushing huge chunks of code this quickly shows the whole thing is vibe coded I actually don’t mind LLM generated code when it’s been manually reviewed, but this and a quick look through other submissions makes me realise the author is simply trying to pad their resume with OSS projects. Respect the hustle, but it shows a lack of respect for other’s t…

Fair point. I won't submit here again until I've put in the work to make something that respects people's time to evaluate it. Lesson learned. :)

Re: Zpdf: PDF text extraction in Zig

#73

Post by squirrellous »

saidinesh5 wrote: post #55
kennethallen wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two big advantages: You avoid an unnecessary copy. Normal read system call gets the data from disk hardware into the kernel page cache and then copies it into the buffer you provide in your process memory. With mmap, the page cache is mapped directly into your process memory, no copy. All running processes share the mapped copy of the file. There are a lot of downsides to mmap: you lose explicit error handling and fi…

This is a very interesting link. I didn't expect mmap to be less performant than read() calls. I now wonder which use cases would mmap suit better - if any... > All running processes share the mapped copy of the file. So something like building linkers that deal with read only shared libraries "plugins" etc ..?

One reason to use shared memory mmap is to ensure that even if your process crashes, the memory stays intact. Another is to communicate between different processes.

Re: Zpdf: PDF text extraction in Zig

#74

Post by littlestymaar »

lulzx wrote: post #44
Jach wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're well beyond benefit of the doubt these days. If it looks like a duck... For me there wasn't any doubt, the author's first top comment here was evidence enough, then seeing the readme + random code + random commit message, it's all obvious LLM-speak to me. I don't particularly care, though, and I'm more positive about LLMs than negative even if I don't (yet?) use them very much. I think it's hilarious that a few…

I have updated the licence to WTFPL. I'll try my best to make it a really good one!

> I have updated the licence to WTFPL.

You still have no basis in claiming copyright protection hence you cannot set a license on that code.

Instead of the WTFPL you should just write a disclaimer that due to being machine generated and devoid of creating work, the work is not protected by copyright and free to be used without any license.

Re: Zpdf: PDF text extraction in Zig

#75

Post by lulzx »

littlestymaar wrote: post #74
lulzx wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have updated the licence to WTFPL. I'll try my best to make it a really good one!

> I have updated the licence to WTFPL. You still have no basis in claiming copyright protection hence you cannot set a license on that code. Instead of the WTFPL you should just write a disclaimer that due to being machine generated and devoid of creating work, the work is not protected by copyright and free to be used without any license.

hasn't world moved on from these things already?

Re: Zpdf: PDF text extraction in Zig

#76

Post by lulzx »

littlestymaar wrote: post #67
lulzx wrote: post #2

I built a PDF text extraction library in Zig that's significantly faster than MuPDF for text extraction workloads. ~41K pages/sec peak throughput. Key choices: memory-mapped I/O, SIMD string search, parallel page extraction, streaming output. Handles CID fonts, incremental updates, all common compression filters. ~5,000 lines, no dependencies, compiles in Why it's fast: - Memory-mapped file I/O (no read syscalls) - Z…

> I built You didn't. Claude did. Like it did write this comment. And you didn't even bother testing it before submitting, which is insulting to everyone.

tools are tools.

Re: Zpdf: PDF text extraction in Zig

#78

Post by littlestymaar »

ncgl wrote: post #38
littlestymaar wrote: post #16

- First commit 3hours ago. - commit message: LLM-generated. - README: LLM-generated. I'm not convinced that projects vibe coded over the evening deserve the HN front page… Edit: and of course the author's blog is also full of AI slop… 2026 hasn't even started I already hate it.

Using Ai isn't lazier than your regurgitated dismissal, to be fair.

Using AI is not necessarily lazy.

Using AI lazily is a problem though. Writing code has never been the most important part of software development, making sure that the code does what the user needs is what takes most of the time. But from the github issues and the comment here from the few who have tested the tool, it looka like the author didn't even test the AI output on real PDF.

If you use AI to build in 3 month something that would have taken a year without it, then cool. But here we're talking about someone who's spending 2-3 hours every other day building a new fake software project to pad his resume. This isn't something anyone should endorse.

Re: Zpdf: PDF text extraction in Zig

#79

Post by nextaccountic »

kennethallen wrote: post #52
jeffbee wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's fast about mmap?

Two big advantages: You avoid an unnecessary copy. Normal read system call gets the data from disk hardware into the kernel page cache and then copies it into the buffer you provide in your process memory. With mmap, the page cache is mapped directly into your process memory, no copy. All running processes share the mapped copy of the file. There are a lot of downsides to mmap: you lose explicit error handling and fi…

> Consult the classic article on why sophisticated systems like DBMSs do not use mmap: https://db.cs.cmu.edu/mmap-cidr2022/

Sqlite does (or can optionally use mmap). How come?

Is sqlite with mmap less reliable or anything?

Re: Zpdf: PDF text extraction in Zig

#80

Post by jeffbee »

nextaccountic wrote: post #79
kennethallen wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two big advantages: You avoid an unnecessary copy. Normal read system call gets the data from disk hardware into the kernel page cache and then copies it into the buffer you provide in your process memory. With mmap, the page cache is mapped directly into your process memory, no copy. All running processes share the mapped copy of the file. There are a lot of downsides to mmap: you lose explicit error handling and fi…

> Consult the classic article on why sophisticated systems like DBMSs do not use mmap: https://db.cs.cmu.edu/mmap-cidr2022/ Sqlite does (or can optionally use mmap). How come? Is sqlite with mmap less reliable or anything?

I know that the spirit of HN will strike me down for this, but sqlite is not a "sophisticated system". It assumes the hardware is lawful neutral. Real hardware is chaotic. Sqlite has a good reputation because it is very easy to use. In fact this is the same reason programmers like mmap: it is a hell of a shortcut.
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