4 ms·

Presumably the biggest loser in all this is Zig, I only know of the language because of Bun. But the timescale still gives me pause… just because AI lets us co

by afavour 5mo ago

Presumably the biggest loser in all this is Zig, I only know of the language because of Bun. But the timescale still gives me pause… just because AI lets us convert a codebase in 6 days doesn’t mean it’s wise. There are surely a lot of downstream implications! It’s always felt a little like Bun is making up a plan as it goes along (and maybe that’s unfair), this seems to underline the point.

nine_k 5mo ago
Zig is a great low-level language. It's much better than C, while not being so much larger as e.g. Rust or C++. AFAICT Zig does well in embedded development, and should continue to do so. Note that Zig is not even 1.0 yet.
- internet2000 5mo ago
  Yeah but now they got the fame of the language that fumbled the ball because of an overly onerous anti-AI stance.
  - Chris2048 5mo ago
    It's been repeated many times that the rejection of the Bun PR was unrelated to their AI-policy. It's also not clear they've "fumbled the ball" given how many projects are complaining about slop PRs.
    - stingraycharles 5mo ago
      I think it would help if Zig put out a statement on their actual AI policy, regardless of whether they’d be repeating something that should already be known. As often happens, the online discourse has, for some reason, decided that this was an anti-AI stance, while - as far as I understand - the problem was simply that the PR had problems, which lead to Bun forking Zig.
      - chrisco255 5mo ago
        They did: https://kristoff.it/blog/contributor-poker-and-ai/ https://kristoff.it/blog/contributor-poker-and-ai/
  - scuff3d 5mo ago
    Lol. What a goofy take.
  - toshinoriyagi 5mo ago
    They haven't fumbled anything. One person has used AI to vibe code a rewrite of a Zig program in another language. Zig didn't gain popularity due to Bun, last I checked Bun doesn't even mention it is written in Zig on the homepage. Zig is appreciate for major improvements over C, while being simple and concise. In addition, a core Zig developer has explained why the PR was rejected, because it would introduce non-deterministic bugs into the compiler, just to achieve a speedup Zig is already gaining thanks to recent work on the self-hosted backend and incremental compilation, which are far more general as well.
  - deleted 5mo ago
    [deleted]
- Gigachad 5mo ago
  For most use cases I can’t imagine why you’d make the effort to move off C and not just go all the way to Rust.
  - gbgarbeb 5mo ago
    Rust is too mainstream now. Every Zig fanboy clutches to their heart the confidence that they are still a little bit "alt" in some way.
wolttam 5mo ago
These tools let you get a massive codebase functional in 6 days. But, presumably, there's no better language to target than Rust (in terms of safety/performance), and therefore the rest of time can be spent making the birthed-in-6-days codebase better.
iwontberude 5mo ago
But the author said "the code truly works, passing the test suite on Linux and soon other platforms" which just sounds really wise.

by afavour 5mo ago

nine_k 5mo ago

Zig is a great low-level language. It's much better than C, while not being so much larger as e.g. Rust or C++. AFAICT Zig does well in embedded development, and should continue to do so. Note that Zig is not even 1.0 yet.

internet2000 5mo ago
Yeah but now they got the fame of the language that fumbled the ball because of an overly onerous anti-AI stance.
- Chris2048 5mo ago
  It's been repeated many times that the rejection of the Bun PR was unrelated to their AI-policy. It's also not clear they've "fumbled the ball" given how many projects are complaining about slop PRs.
  - stingraycharles 5mo ago
    I think it would help if Zig put out a statement on their actual AI policy, regardless of whether they’d be repeating something that should already be known. As often happens, the online discourse has, for some reason, decided that this was an anti-AI stance, while - as far as I understand - the problem was simply that the PR had problems, which lead to Bun forking Zig.
    - chrisco255 5mo ago
      They did: https://kristoff.it/blog/contributor-poker-and-ai/ https://kristoff.it/blog/contributor-poker-and-ai/
- scuff3d 5mo ago
  Lol. What a goofy take.
- toshinoriyagi 5mo ago
  They haven't fumbled anything. One person has used AI to vibe code a rewrite of a Zig program in another language. Zig didn't gain popularity due to Bun, last I checked Bun doesn't even mention it is written in Zig on the homepage. Zig is appreciate for major improvements over C, while being simple and concise. In addition, a core Zig developer has explained why the PR was rejected, because it would introduce non-deterministic bugs into the compiler, just to achieve a speedup Zig is already gaining thanks to recent work on the self-hosted backend and incremental compilation, which are far more general as well.
- deleted 5mo ago
  [deleted]
Gigachad 5mo ago
For most use cases I can’t imagine why you’d make the effort to move off C and not just go all the way to Rust.
- gbgarbeb 5mo ago
  Rust is too mainstream now. Every Zig fanboy clutches to their heart the confidence that they are still a little bit "alt" in some way.

wolttam 5mo ago

These tools let you get a massive codebase functional in 6 days. But, presumably, there's no better language to target than Rust (in terms of safety/performance), and therefore the rest of time can be spent making the birthed-in-6-days codebase better.

iwontberude 5mo ago

But the author said "the code truly works, passing the test suite on Linux and soon other platforms" which just sounds really wise.