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- Hacker News
- > You can imagine how we might want to put some social distance between ourselves and a project whose irresponsible software engineering practices invite the exact kind of criticism that people are eager to level.
The other (very salient) points notwithstanding, I'm afraid this quote shows that Zig hasn't learned a lesson that other languages of its generation (and older) have: if a project's memory safety depends only on "responsible engineering practices", then that project most likely won't be memory safe. Quoting the "swiss cheese" model used in risk management: one slice of cheese (engineering practices) just isn't enough if you want to be reasonably sure your program is memory safe.
by rob74 - I mean, case in point. (One of?) Zig's largest adopted projects who was donating $60,000 a year made by a contributor that worked directly with Andrew... Was not "stinky" engineering.
If Bun can't get it right starting in 2026 with all of Zig's tooling and someone who worked on the language, what hope does my random team have?
Especially when we could, instead, use Rust. With a larger community to boot.
by Tadpole9181 - I’m reminded of the hierarchy of controls in machine safety. If you can’t eliminate the hazard, or substitute a less hazardous thing, then engineering out the hazard (like Rust did) is preferable to a procedural control (“git gud at engineering”).by taneq
- To me, this whole effort of rewriting Bun from Zig to Rust looks like a big marketing move. The question is: if Anthropic AI is really that powerful, why not just fix the bugs and give it the more ambitious task of redesigning the existing Bun Zig codebase in a way that eliminates not only the current bugs but also prevents similar ones from happening in the future?by cyber1
- Well either Claude cannot fix those bugs or it can but the Bun team decided to not fix those bugs on purpose.
Not sure which is worse.
by pier25 - Static guarantees are better than stochastic parrots. A static linger beats telling Claude "check this idiom". Etc etc.by andrepd
- "effort" is a big word to describe typing out a few prompts to create something with 5k+ open issues.by bramhaag
- zig doesn't accept ai written codeby advenn
- It is worth noting that before rewriting in Rust, Bun maintained a fork used to accelerate the compilation and informed those who asked that this fork could never be merged due to Zig's zero-LLM policy.
A few weeks later, Bun began the Rust rewrite. Although not explicitly stated, I suspect these two events may be related.
by ofseed - I do wonder to what degree this weird play originated from Anthropic, versus from an overeager founder selling past the close.
I can imagine Anthropic wanting to acquire Bun without the gimmicks.
by rao-v - But Rust is exactly the tooling that gives humans and LLMs a lot of those checks for free, and things like RAII.by Tiberium
- The sole reason for that rewrite was Zig creator announcing he won't be accepting AI contributions. It hurt Anthropic's feelings.by dwdz
- Despite stated otherwise in the post, this is a personal attack.
Anyway, let's try to discuss something more technical: I predict Zig will lose steam, and in 2027, will lose relevance:
1) It's hardcore Anti-AI 2) It's moved to Codeberg 3) It doesn't have the momentum to sustain the disadvantages of these two decisions
The project will in max 2 years make a blog post, not admitting to their mistakes, telling themselves that Zig is a success, despite the industry having moved on.
by hazn - what's the problem in moving to codeberg?by orangeisthe
- Could just as easily say the same thing about Bun.
If one can easily swap in the next new js engine du jour…
by pragmatic - > Anyway, let's try to discuss something more technical:
I'll note that this is followed by an entirely non-technical statement of opinion.
by jorams - It's a conflict of core values, and you've demonstrated it here.
You have defined success (for a project, and possibly a person too) as solely 'relevance'.
Jarred would agree with you wholeheartedly, I imagine. Andrew would ask you to leave.
It's okay to have different values and part ways.
It's not wise, however, to project your personal values onto other people, and judge them on those fabricated merits. You'll end up frustrated and confused more often than not.
Judge their choice of values. Judge them on their alignment with their chosen values.
As an example, Andrew doesn't like Jarred's chosen 'Silicon Valley' values, but thinks that Jarred aligns himself well with those values. This feels as a personal attack to you who also holds those values. And on some level, a person intimating you core values suck couldn't be more personal.
by lkey - 4) It's led by an emotionally unintelligent individual who will personally attack you for choosing alternative products.by tuckwat
- I also think Zig has a rough road ahead, but not because of AI or moving to codeberg. No, it's because Andrew isn't really a BDFL. He's at best a DFL. The project is already mostly closed off to external contributors.
It kind of reminds me of Elm in a way. Though I'm not expecting 6 years of drought just yet.
by dminik - To be honest, I'm also leaning this way, especially because of the hardcore anti-AI stance, so much that Zig will close security vulnerability issues on Codeberg if you mention that they were found with LLMs. I don't think that this is a good approach.by Tiberium
- They don't have a goal of becoming a popular language, though and will continue to work on it as long as there are donations. They don't care about being mainstream and there are niche companies who appreciate Zig and donate.by f311a
- > I actually don't have any personal criticisms of Jarred
The whole post felt like a personal criticism of Jarred.
by nilirl - I think he messed that part up and it comes off as passive aggressive but he is probably scared of the “outrage” from the angels of the internet about how rude he was to Jarredby ozgrakkurt
- I'm about to comment exactly this.by cinkhangin
- And literally 3 sentences later he goes back to insulting him ("productivity fantasy fever dream"). Even if that is true, it's still an unwise post to publish in this form IMHO. If the goal was to defend Zig, that could've been done in a less personal manner.by morningsam
- I'd consider the opinions professional criticisms of Jarred. While focused on him individually I don't think they are very personalby vincent-uden
- Not sure a personal attack against Jarred really helps the case for using Zig. He could have and should have focused on the language and not “a stinky manager”. Honestly, this makes me want to steer clear of Andrew as much as Jarred.by dnoberon
- Makes me want to give him a handshake and a big hugby conartist6
- Andrew's online social behavior is largely a streak of pettiness imo. This is not even close to the first time I've seen him write something I felt was overtly mean spirited, not just euphemistically "blunt".
"Was silence not an option?"
- Its an attack an Jarred's public, (un)professional behaviour. One most of us in the community have born witness too in recent months.
"Jarred, in his professional capacity, drove away many from our community, and we'd prefer to disassociate." is not 'Jarred is a bad person, privately'.
Now, in these circles, that might as well be the same thing, given how little personal life I imagine most VCs have left outside of work. But that's not really Andrew's problem.
I won't defend Andrew's style; I think he could mask some his neurodivergence more when communicating to a wider neurotypical audience. But it's his project, his community is certainly aware, and this too, is a known quantity.
It might help you though, to reread the piece with the assumption that Andrew is being completely sincere, without adding in a secondary subtext like, "Andrew is trying to assassinate Jarred's character".
by lkey