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I think like most people, I don’t have a problem with Andrew “calling a spade a spade,” even if I find his reasoning motivated. The bigger problem with the post

I think like most people, I don’t have a problem with Andrew “calling a spade a spade,” even if I find his reasoning motivated. The bigger problem with the post is that it talks out of both ends of the mouth: it’s clearly meant as a personal attack, but also insists that it isn’t. When I read the post, my first thought was that I wouldn’t want to build things in Zig, because any technical decision I make, good or bad, might subject me to this kind of article from their BDFL. I can’t conceive of the leadership of the Python or Rust or any other community I’ve ever worked with doing something like that.

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etdznots 3mo ago
[flagged]
- poly2it 3mo ago
  Slander? Are you serious? > We wouldn't have gotten this far if not for Zig, and I'll always be grateful. Until very recently, programming language choice was a one-way decision for a project like Bun. https://bun.com/blog/bun-in-rust https://bun.com/blog/bun-in-rust
- woodruffw 3mo ago
  It’s a huge stretch to call Bun’s post slander. It’s a relatively bland technical post with an extremely contextual negative opinion about Zig. I read both posts, and didn’t leave the Bun one with a negative opinion of Zig. But I did leave the response post with that opinion.
  - embedding-shape 3mo ago
    Yet one is technical and the one you actually got a negative opinion about a programming language supposedly isn't? I knew it was gonna happen at one point, guess I didn't believe it'd happen so soon, but I still can't believe that nowadays people make choices about what programming language to used based on what semi-celebrity they like the most, and it's all about emotional arguments. What happened and since when is this the way people make technical choices? I feel like I woke up in an alternative universe.
    - woodruffw 3mo ago
      I didn’t say the other wasn’t technical. (I also don’t have any opinions about micro-celebrities or whatever else. I don’t know Jarred or Andrew, and I have priors about JavaScript that in any other context would naturally bias me against Bun. But the Zig post’s flaws are, in my opinion, not ignorable.)
      - embedding-shape 3mo ago
        > I didn’t say the other wasn’t technical. What was the technical parts of Zig's post that made you leave with a negative opinion of Zig then? Something doesn't add up here.
        woodruffw 3mo ago
        The technical content of the Andrew’s post didn’t leave me with a negative opinion. To quote my original comment: > When I read the post, my first thought was that I wouldn’t want to build things in Zig, because any technical decision I make, good or bad, might subject me to this kind of article from their BDFL. I can’t conceive of the leadership of the Python or Rust or any other community I’ve ever worked with doing something like that. This is the negative opinion in question.
    - pdimitar 3mo ago
      You are reaching quite a bit, and misrepresenting too. But it's actually as simple as: Jarred's post was mature and didn't throw shade; Andrew's threw quite a bit of it while insisting it did not. I and many others don't want to be slandered or trash-talked if we moved away from a language we previously chose. That can and has had actual business impact on projects / companies in the past. So naturally, people will judge you if you cannot be mature when responding to an event that made some splash in the ecosystem.
    - themgt 3mo ago
      Yet one is technical and the one you actually got a negative opinion about a programming language supposedly isn't? Yes, on the one hand here's "Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs" and on the other hand here's my blog "embedding-shape is a stinky slop beginner shit show" And yet you got a negative opinion of me from the "embedding-shape is a stinky slop hack beginner shit show" post rather than SICP? I feel like I woke up in an alternative universe!
  - threatofrain 3mo ago
    Is it true that Jarred and the Bun team at large engaged in "outright fabrication" in professional business discussions? What do you think of that statement made by Andrew? It was serious enough that Jarred showed up to post receipts with very little commentary, so as not to distract from the receipts. The charge of professional dishonesty is very strong.
    - mi_lk 3mo ago
      Of course you'll buy that because "receipts" were only half the story and posting little commentary gives him an edge. See: https://hachyderm.io/@kristoff/116898483283387067 https://hachyderm.io/@kristoff/116898483283387067
      - deleted 3mo ago
        [deleted]
      - tomnipotent 3mo ago
        There's literally nothing in that post of substance, other than the fact the Zig community is obsessed with trying to "prove him wrong" or some other such nonsense. Jarred's responses have been composed and civil, while the Zig team has been petty and vindictive.
    - woodruffw 3mo ago
      Who knows? I certainly don’t. I think there were valid technical and professional criticisms in that post. For example, “Oven’s working culture was poor” is an excellent thing to communicate that I otherwise wouldn’t have any sense about. At the same time, I also think they were essentially wrapped in an insult sandwich: the post starts with personal swipes against Jarred (who, again, I don’t know) and end with an insult to the reader (who is expected to not believe their lying eyes about all the personal attacks they just read).
- JuniperMesos 3mo ago
  It's insane that you think there's any moral problem with using a LLM to rewrite a FOSS software project in another programming language, regardless of whether or not Anthropic employees are doing it. This is the kind of thing that every free software license worthy of the name allows and encourages anyone to do for any reason.
  - etdznots 3mo ago
    I didnt say that there was a moral or legal problem with rewriting FOSS in another language, I said that Anthropic doing so in this instance was a direct act of hostility aimed at chilling critical discourse about their products and marketing narrative, and I’m shocked at how many people (maybe) are rushing to their defense. BTW the rhetorical device of misrepresenting what someone else says as something much weaker or incorrect and then arguing with that is usually called “strawmanning”. Just thought I’d point that out to you in case you weren’t conscious that this is what you’re doing.
    - JuniperMesos 3mo ago
      I think it is insane to characterize Anthropic, or Jared Sumner in particular, using Anthropic's LLM to assist with rewriting Bun in Rust as a direct act of hostility aimed at chilling critical discourse about Anthropic's products and marketing narrative. I'm defending Anthropic because I think this is an okay thing for anyone at all to do, and I would defend anyone at all doing it. If any criticism of Anthropic can in principle be chilled by an Anthropic employee using an LLM to rewrite a piece of open-source software in Rust, then that criticism cannot possibly be good.
- LtWorf 3mo ago
  [flagged]
  - woodruffw 3mo ago
    I actually don’t work for the PSF, and have never received any money from the PSF. Thank you for imputing bias into my motives rather than responding to the comment, though.
    - LtWorf 3mo ago
      [flagged]
      - woodruffw 3mo ago
        Yep. If anything, this ought to bias me against Anthropic. But I don’t share my employer’s opinions about everything, as I assume you don’t. (Edit: I don’t understand the relevant of these links, to be clear. PyPI is a PSF-hosted project, but that’s because PSF is a legal and fiscal umbrella, not because they pay me for my contributions to PyPI. They don’t.)
        LtWorf 3mo ago
        [flagged]
        woodruffw 3mo ago
        Someone pays your living, I’m guessing. But I trust that you aren’t unduly motivated by their interests, because you’re a human with your own thoughts and opinions. I ask you kindly to grant me the same presumption.
        LtWorf 3mo ago
        Nah, I would not comment on things related to my employer's business because that might mean they could sue me for damages or insider trading or all sort of things. I'm sure the same applies to you.
faitswulff 3mo ago
> I can’t conceive of the leadership of the Python or Rust or any other community I’ve ever worked with doing something like that. At least for Rust, part of this is because there is no BDFL, by design. Python has moved away from the BDFL model as well, IIRC. Individual contributors can get mad and write angry personal attacks, but there’s no face of the language like there is with Zig.
- woodruffw 3mo ago
  Yes, I think this is a good thing about Rust. (It’s of course a tradeoff, since Rust moves more slowly than I think a lot of people would prefer.)
jraph 3mo ago
If you don't intend to write misleading stuff that makes Zig look bad when you leave and if you avoid ghosting the Zig foundation in scheduled meetings you had with them, I suppose you should be good.
- woodruffw 3mo ago
  I think we can quibble about the Bun post’s factual claims. But I don’t think the post was deceptive or dishonest in its claims. Like most technical writing, it represents a vantage point. As for ghosting in meetings: sure, that seems bad. I would also be upset if someone did that to me. But you can state that factually without making it into a personal attack. It would even be more convincing.
  - skilning 3mo ago
    > Like most technical writing, I think you've missed the core thesis of the article. That post _wasn't_ technical writing. It was marketing disguised as technical writing.
    - woodruffw 3mo ago
      It’s marketing that is also technical writing. Most companies do this, and IMO we should prefer this over the alternative (which is corporate blogspam). Compare Cloudflare, the Google Chrome Security blog, etc.
    - stingraycharles 3mo ago
      It was way too technical to disqualify it as not being technical writing. Writing can serve multiple purposes.
  - jraph 3mo ago
    > But you can state that factually without making it into a personal attack. It would even be more convincing. I 100% agree with this. I was just saying that you are probably less at risk of triggering people if you don't politely lie about stuff they make. I don't 100% agree with Andrew's response and I think he should apologize or explain more.
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Lerc 3mo ago
>When I read the post, my first thought was that I wouldn’t want to build things in Zig, because any technical decision I make, good or bad, might subject me to this kind of article from their BDFL. I think it is worse than that, the comments from people in threads about this suggest that this is an attitude that is creeping into the community. They may not be a majority, but if kinder souls decide to leave for a more welcoming community, the remainder will be more concentrated.
- kalcode 3mo ago
  There seems to be a team sport mentality with AI topic in HN these days. Almost feels like people are picking sides, and thus not being very thoughtful or rational. Sigh, there definitely an attitude creeping into the community and it's a huge turn off unfortunately.
  - Lerc 3mo ago
    I was thinking of the Zig community but I agree that there seem to be some tribalism on HN as well. Possibly the thing that will determine the long term survivability of each will be the respective attitudes of dang compared to Andrew. Putting out flare ups may be a fairly thankless and unending job but it probably is more protective than pouring gasolene over them. Maybe one day dang will pop and it will all come out in a spectacular rage.
  - theptip 3mo ago
    Yeah, I think AI could well destroy this community. There’s a lot of personal identity tied up in being a hacker (broadly defined), and only some aspects of that identity will be strengthened by AI. Similar to Go and Chess, AI might make “programming for beauty” more accessible and popular. However it will almost certainly make the act of writing “code for money” much less valuable, which means many people will stop getting paid exorbitant sums to do what they love. Personally what I loved was never the typing characters or optimizing algorithms; building is better than ever. But I really empathize with those who loved the craft of code golf, algorithms, literate programming, the elegance of micro structure of programs, etc. and who see their world under threat.
cmrdporcupine 3mo ago
I had this exact same reaction. Agreeing with the substance of the critique of approach etc but not at all its tone nor of the underlying elitism that lays there. This is not how professionals behave in a profession. Decorum actually matters. Anthropic is doing bad stuff. They clearly have a broken internal engineering culture. Hence I don't use their products. But I expect to see this laid out in a structured argumentation that doesn't go after people and their personalities.
ibejoeb 3mo ago
Everyone is motivated. It seems to me that Anthropic went out fishing for something to blow up. As Ray puts it: "Management eagerly approved the Rust rewrite option because it was a great marketing opportunity to showcase their new Fable model, Anthropic already uses Rust, and Zig is openly against using Anthropic’s products." Sounds spot on. Others have pointed to some plausible technical benefits from the port, namely that it forces an enumeration of unsafe code boundaries. There's probably something to that, but the big idea is that Anthropic bet that its models could do a big job, and they needed to both demonstrate that and make hay of it. Everything aligned. They did the port. The artisans might call it slop, but it runs, they did it like 2 weeks, and they stuck it to the guy that shuns AI. If you're the type of manager who picks farming out work to a body shop with 100 unskilled workers instead of hiring 2 legitimate FTEs, then this is speaking your language.
- anthonypasq 3mo ago
  none of this justifies a nasty mean spirited blog post.
  - ibejoeb 3mo ago
    I didn't say or imply that it did. I just don't believe that the decision to port bun was based on innate technical merits of zig vs rust. I also don't think that it is entirely meritless, as I mentioned, because now that there's a par rewrite, there is clear delineation of the areas that need to be ported to safe rust. Still, does anyone really think that this would have happened without Anthropic's provocation? I see it like this: Anthropic saw an opportunity to make a splash. Jarred made it happen without directly disparaging zig, but the implication is that zig couldn't cut it. Andrew made it more personal.
    - woodruffw 3mo ago
      I don't understand how a port is a "provocation." That's a very cynical and transactional way of thinking about open source. (As for Anthropic's motivation: only they know. But I suspect that they saw Zig's AI policy as a potentially existential risk, and moved to de-risk their position. That is a technical decision, just not one rooted in the merits of any particular language.)
mekoka 3mo ago
> I can’t conceive of the leadership of the Python or Rust or any other community I’ve ever worked with doing something like that. I'd be prudent to use a clear faux-pas by a BDFL as an argument to push for an alternative, seemingly more consensual, leadership style. I'd also be careful to fall for the apparent lack of overt aggression in the latter type of structures, as a necessarily positive signal. I've seen people in various such communities (including the two cited languages) that have chosen not to interact with their steering committees, because of perceived toxicity. This can and does happen with any kind of structure and can take many shapes, some of whom are too subtle or passive to even accurately pinpoint, in the way you would for example directly index a BDFL. In The Tyranny of Structurelessness Jo Freeman made the case that the lack of a clear structure in the make up of a movement presents with opportunities for very fuzzy power dynamics and related abuses that are also much more challenging to deal with.
- woodruffw 3mo ago
  Yeah, I don’t mean to detract from the serious communication issues that other ecosystems have. (I don’t think committee/unstructured/BDFL communities do better as a rule, it’s more about the culture that’s promulgated by whoever is at the top, regardless of how many of them there are.)
dundarious 3mo ago
It might be helpful to read the latest revision of Andrew's post, which may address this concern for you. It received several revisions: https://github.com/andrewrk/andrewkelley.me/commits/master/posts/my-thoughts-bun-rust-rewrite.html https://github.com/andrewrk/andrewkelley.me/commits/master/p...
- sigmar 3mo ago
  To me, this addendum makes it worse. Making small edits to a post like this makes it seem like you're doubling down on the original resentful points, especially with all the new justifications like "a trillion dollar company fired the first shot." Should have just deleted the blog post in its entirety imho. >outstanding relationships with essentially everyone who openly uses Zig and talks about it publicly Essentially everyone? more blogposts incoming?
  - dundarious 3mo ago
    >>outstanding relationships with essentially everyone who openly uses Zig and talks about it publicly > Essentially everyone? more blogposts incoming? Andrew is explicitly saying the opposite, but you're entitled to your supposition that that is bluster, I suppose.
- 0xffff2 3mo ago
  I don't think the style of multiple revisions to walk back the most problematic parts really helps the case. It very much leaves me with the impression that the original version is the one that the author really meant, with the revisions being just a weak attempt to deflect criticism.
  - dundarious 3mo ago
    So if you leave a post unchanged, it's proof you meant what you wrote; and if you edit it, it's even stronger proof you meant what you wrote, even if the edits signify some change. I understand that many interpretations are open in such things, but this kind of logic seems ridiculous.
- 3mo ago
colinsane 3mo ago
> The bigger problem with the post is that it talks out of both ends of the mouth: it’s clearly meant as a personal attack, but also insists that it isn’t. my instinct is to step up and defend Andrew: to say that truly, he has strong opinions -- which is to say he _cares_ about doing things right -- but that he's more patient and accommodating than you're judging him to be from this 10,000ft view. that's kinda weird: you might view this as a personal attack _from_ Andrew against Bun and i might view the reactions as personal attacks _against_ Andrew. viewing it through this lens without our preconceptions ought to make either both parties or neither party look bad, i think? i don't know the solution except to highlight the outsized impact that our individual preconceptions play when judging a situation from 10,000ft away.
- draw_down 3mo ago
  I think it's weird to say crap like "So and so was a stinky manager" and then be like it's not a personal attack! I liked Zed Shaw. I liked Ted Unangst. They made solid technical points and they were kinda mean about it. They didn't act like butter wouldn't melt in their mouths at the same time.
  - preg_match 3mo ago
    I would argue your performance as a manager is not a personal attack, it's a professional attack. Calling someone a bad doctor because they routinely botch surgeries isn't a personal attack either. They might be a really good person, but they need to put down the scalpel. Also, none of this is "new" or anything. Jarred openly bragged about overworking his people. Which, okay, fine, maybe that's a philosophy. But then you can't act like essentially saying your own words back at you is somehow an attack. It's just not. People need to be more careful and understand that no, actually, you DO NOT own your perception. Your actions and words both curate your perception and, so sorry, you can't necessarily change it. It's not yours, it's ours.
- woodruffw 3mo ago
  I want to be very clear: I don't dislike Andrew (or Jarred). Everything I've seen about him suggests that he's a bright and motivated person, and (like a lot of people, including myself) I suspect he struggles with how is tone is read online versus IRL. I'm not judging him as a human being. I just think the post does not accomplish his goals, unless his goal really was to write a personal attack.
overgard 3mo ago
To me it's just highlighting the reality -- Anthropic fired the first shots. I think it's reasonable for people to say, hey, if you're going to trash the reputation of Zig (in a pretend-objective way) then it's entirely fair for people to put in important context that Bun was not written well.
- woodruffw 3mo ago
  I really struggle to find a plain, non-motivated reading of the Bun's post that could be fairly described as a "trashing." It's a very bland post.
  - overgard 3mo ago
    They're suggesting that the bugs are endemic to using Zig and couldn't be prevented by a modified coding style. Then they point out that the well known way to avoid the issue (defer) is "not ergonomic" (really one extra line is that bad?) It seems like a lot of misinformation couched in a reasonable sounding tone, which is par for the course for how these labs operate.
    - woodruffw 3mo ago
      I don’t think the basic idea that Zig is less safe than a language like Rust (and therefore has different classes of “endemic” bugs) is controversial among Zig programmers. The points they make around explicit defers are a lot more subtle than it being too many lines. Quoting: > For Zig code, when exactly should we be running the cleanup code? If we're passing the same *T to many different functions, how do we know when it's no longer accessible and can be cleaned up? How does it work when some functions need to continue to reference the memory after the function is called?
      - overgard 3mo ago
        I've seen plenty of projects in C with way more complexity and far fewer issues than Bun, and C is definitely less safe than Zig. Memory management strategies are not new things! Professional developers learn to use their tools effectively. After reading the article and the connected context I just get the sense that this is a poorly developed codebase. A bad carpenter blames his tools and all that. I agree with the article that this seems to be about culture. A vibe coded port that explicitly uses unsafe in Rust is not going to be any safer. I mean look, I'm sorry, but at this point I cannot take the Bun project seriously. If people are bragging about not-bothering-to-read-the-code and practicing atrocious engineering with LLMs, and then they're like "it's the language's fault!". Yeah, no, I don't buy it. Plenty of people can write applications in languages without automatic memory management without endemic use-after-free issues. As vibe coders like to say: skill issue.
ares623 3mo ago
Andrew didn't make the hit piece out of nowhere, unprovoked. Jared, using Anthropic's multi-billion dollar microphone, painted Zig in a bad light with their first (denied) attempt to merge a vibecoded PR to improve Zig's build times. Then very shortly after that failed attempt, about 11 days later I gather, Jared (again with help from Anthropic's very big microphone) made public the Zig-to-Rust port. So unless you're planning on getting acquihired by Anthropic _and_ planning on porting away from Rust using their tools very publicly, I think you'll be safe from such pieces.
- rcxdude 3mo ago
  What exactly is Anthropic's multi-billion dollar microphone here?
turtlebits 3mo ago
I appreciate having an opinion vs a bunch of safe words saying nothing. Most CEO communication probably isn't even written by them and has a person-less touch. It's totally fine to get a negative reaction and avoid the project. It's called having human emotions, which is actually healthy. Getting feedback is how you learn and grow as a person.
- woodruffw 3mo ago
  There’s a difference between having a negative reaction, which is a natural human thing, and talking out of both sides of your mouth. You can also have negative things to say (or just strong opinions) without being indecorous or unkind.

deleted 3mo ago

[deleted]

etdznots 3mo ago

[flagged]

poly2it 3mo ago
Slander? Are you serious? > We wouldn't have gotten this far if not for Zig, and I'll always be grateful. Until very recently, programming language choice was a one-way decision for a project like Bun. https://bun.com/blog/bun-in-rust https://bun.com/blog/bun-in-rust
woodruffw 3mo ago
It’s a huge stretch to call Bun’s post slander. It’s a relatively bland technical post with an extremely contextual negative opinion about Zig. I read both posts, and didn’t leave the Bun one with a negative opinion of Zig. But I did leave the response post with that opinion.
- embedding-shape 3mo ago
  Yet one is technical and the one you actually got a negative opinion about a programming language supposedly isn't? I knew it was gonna happen at one point, guess I didn't believe it'd happen so soon, but I still can't believe that nowadays people make choices about what programming language to used based on what semi-celebrity they like the most, and it's all about emotional arguments. What happened and since when is this the way people make technical choices? I feel like I woke up in an alternative universe.
  - woodruffw 3mo ago
    I didn’t say the other wasn’t technical. (I also don’t have any opinions about micro-celebrities or whatever else. I don’t know Jarred or Andrew, and I have priors about JavaScript that in any other context would naturally bias me against Bun. But the Zig post’s flaws are, in my opinion, not ignorable.)
    - embedding-shape 3mo ago
      > I didn’t say the other wasn’t technical. What was the technical parts of Zig's post that made you leave with a negative opinion of Zig then? Something doesn't add up here.
      - woodruffw 3mo ago
        The technical content of the Andrew’s post didn’t leave me with a negative opinion. To quote my original comment: > When I read the post, my first thought was that I wouldn’t want to build things in Zig, because any technical decision I make, good or bad, might subject me to this kind of article from their BDFL. I can’t conceive of the leadership of the Python or Rust or any other community I’ve ever worked with doing something like that. This is the negative opinion in question.
  - pdimitar 3mo ago
    You are reaching quite a bit, and misrepresenting too. But it's actually as simple as: Jarred's post was mature and didn't throw shade; Andrew's threw quite a bit of it while insisting it did not. I and many others don't want to be slandered or trash-talked if we moved away from a language we previously chose. That can and has had actual business impact on projects / companies in the past. So naturally, people will judge you if you cannot be mature when responding to an event that made some splash in the ecosystem.
  - themgt 3mo ago
    Yet one is technical and the one you actually got a negative opinion about a programming language supposedly isn't? Yes, on the one hand here's "Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs" and on the other hand here's my blog "embedding-shape is a stinky slop beginner shit show" And yet you got a negative opinion of me from the "embedding-shape is a stinky slop hack beginner shit show" post rather than SICP? I feel like I woke up in an alternative universe!
- threatofrain 3mo ago
  Is it true that Jarred and the Bun team at large engaged in "outright fabrication" in professional business discussions? What do you think of that statement made by Andrew? It was serious enough that Jarred showed up to post receipts with very little commentary, so as not to distract from the receipts. The charge of professional dishonesty is very strong.
  - mi_lk 3mo ago
    Of course you'll buy that because "receipts" were only half the story and posting little commentary gives him an edge. See: https://hachyderm.io/@kristoff/116898483283387067 https://hachyderm.io/@kristoff/116898483283387067
    - deleted 3mo ago
      [deleted]
    - tomnipotent 3mo ago
      There's literally nothing in that post of substance, other than the fact the Zig community is obsessed with trying to "prove him wrong" or some other such nonsense. Jarred's responses have been composed and civil, while the Zig team has been petty and vindictive.
  - woodruffw 3mo ago
    Who knows? I certainly don’t. I think there were valid technical and professional criticisms in that post. For example, “Oven’s working culture was poor” is an excellent thing to communicate that I otherwise wouldn’t have any sense about. At the same time, I also think they were essentially wrapped in an insult sandwich: the post starts with personal swipes against Jarred (who, again, I don’t know) and end with an insult to the reader (who is expected to not believe their lying eyes about all the personal attacks they just read).
JuniperMesos 3mo ago
It's insane that you think there's any moral problem with using a LLM to rewrite a FOSS software project in another programming language, regardless of whether or not Anthropic employees are doing it. This is the kind of thing that every free software license worthy of the name allows and encourages anyone to do for any reason.
- etdznots 3mo ago
  I didnt say that there was a moral or legal problem with rewriting FOSS in another language, I said that Anthropic doing so in this instance was a direct act of hostility aimed at chilling critical discourse about their products and marketing narrative, and I’m shocked at how many people (maybe) are rushing to their defense. BTW the rhetorical device of misrepresenting what someone else says as something much weaker or incorrect and then arguing with that is usually called “strawmanning”. Just thought I’d point that out to you in case you weren’t conscious that this is what you’re doing.
  - JuniperMesos 3mo ago
    I think it is insane to characterize Anthropic, or Jared Sumner in particular, using Anthropic's LLM to assist with rewriting Bun in Rust as a direct act of hostility aimed at chilling critical discourse about Anthropic's products and marketing narrative. I'm defending Anthropic because I think this is an okay thing for anyone at all to do, and I would defend anyone at all doing it. If any criticism of Anthropic can in principle be chilled by an Anthropic employee using an LLM to rewrite a piece of open-source software in Rust, then that criticism cannot possibly be good.
LtWorf 3mo ago
[flagged]
- woodruffw 3mo ago
  I actually don’t work for the PSF, and have never received any money from the PSF. Thank you for imputing bias into my motives rather than responding to the comment, though.
  - LtWorf 3mo ago
    [flagged]
    - woodruffw 3mo ago
      Yep. If anything, this ought to bias me against Anthropic. But I don’t share my employer’s opinions about everything, as I assume you don’t. (Edit: I don’t understand the relevant of these links, to be clear. PyPI is a PSF-hosted project, but that’s because PSF is a legal and fiscal umbrella, not because they pay me for my contributions to PyPI. They don’t.)
      - LtWorf 3mo ago
        [flagged]
        woodruffw 3mo ago
        Someone pays your living, I’m guessing. But I trust that you aren’t unduly motivated by their interests, because you’re a human with your own thoughts and opinions. I ask you kindly to grant me the same presumption.
        LtWorf 3mo ago
        Nah, I would not comment on things related to my employer's business because that might mean they could sue me for damages or insider trading or all sort of things. I'm sure the same applies to you.

faitswulff 3mo ago

> I can’t conceive of the leadership of the Python or Rust or any other community I’ve ever worked with doing something like that. At least for Rust, part of this is because there is no BDFL, by design. Python has moved away from the BDFL model as well, IIRC. Individual contributors can get mad and write angry personal attacks, but there’s no face of the language like there is with Zig.

woodruffw 3mo ago
Yes, I think this is a good thing about Rust. (It’s of course a tradeoff, since Rust moves more slowly than I think a lot of people would prefer.)

jraph 3mo ago

If you don't intend to write misleading stuff that makes Zig look bad when you leave and if you avoid ghosting the Zig foundation in scheduled meetings you had with them, I suppose you should be good.

woodruffw 3mo ago
I think we can quibble about the Bun post’s factual claims. But I don’t think the post was deceptive or dishonest in its claims. Like most technical writing, it represents a vantage point. As for ghosting in meetings: sure, that seems bad. I would also be upset if someone did that to me. But you can state that factually without making it into a personal attack. It would even be more convincing.
- skilning 3mo ago
  > Like most technical writing, I think you've missed the core thesis of the article. That post _wasn't_ technical writing. It was marketing disguised as technical writing.
  - woodruffw 3mo ago
    It’s marketing that is also technical writing. Most companies do this, and IMO we should prefer this over the alternative (which is corporate blogspam). Compare Cloudflare, the Google Chrome Security blog, etc.
  - stingraycharles 3mo ago
    It was way too technical to disqualify it as not being technical writing. Writing can serve multiple purposes.
- jraph 3mo ago
  > But you can state that factually without making it into a personal attack. It would even be more convincing. I 100% agree with this. I was just saying that you are probably less at risk of triggering people if you don't politely lie about stuff they make. I don't 100% agree with Andrew's response and I think he should apologize or explain more.

deleted 3mo ago

[deleted]

Lerc 3mo ago

>When I read the post, my first thought was that I wouldn’t want to build things in Zig, because any technical decision I make, good or bad, might subject me to this kind of article from their BDFL. I think it is worse than that, the comments from people in threads about this suggest that this is an attitude that is creeping into the community. They may not be a majority, but if kinder souls decide to leave for a more welcoming community, the remainder will be more concentrated.

kalcode 3mo ago
There seems to be a team sport mentality with AI topic in HN these days. Almost feels like people are picking sides, and thus not being very thoughtful or rational. Sigh, there definitely an attitude creeping into the community and it's a huge turn off unfortunately.
- Lerc 3mo ago
  I was thinking of the Zig community but I agree that there seem to be some tribalism on HN as well. Possibly the thing that will determine the long term survivability of each will be the respective attitudes of dang compared to Andrew. Putting out flare ups may be a fairly thankless and unending job but it probably is more protective than pouring gasolene over them. Maybe one day dang will pop and it will all come out in a spectacular rage.
- theptip 3mo ago
  Yeah, I think AI could well destroy this community. There’s a lot of personal identity tied up in being a hacker (broadly defined), and only some aspects of that identity will be strengthened by AI. Similar to Go and Chess, AI might make “programming for beauty” more accessible and popular. However it will almost certainly make the act of writing “code for money” much less valuable, which means many people will stop getting paid exorbitant sums to do what they love. Personally what I loved was never the typing characters or optimizing algorithms; building is better than ever. But I really empathize with those who loved the craft of code golf, algorithms, literate programming, the elegance of micro structure of programs, etc. and who see their world under threat.

cmrdporcupine 3mo ago

I had this exact same reaction. Agreeing with the substance of the critique of approach etc but not at all its tone nor of the underlying elitism that lays there. This is not how professionals behave in a profession. Decorum actually matters. Anthropic is doing bad stuff. They clearly have a broken internal engineering culture. Hence I don't use their products. But I expect to see this laid out in a structured argumentation that doesn't go after people and their personalities.

ibejoeb 3mo ago

Everyone is motivated. It seems to me that Anthropic went out fishing for something to blow up. As Ray puts it: "Management eagerly approved the Rust rewrite option because it was a great marketing opportunity to showcase their new Fable model, Anthropic already uses Rust, and Zig is openly against using Anthropic’s products." Sounds spot on. Others have pointed to some plausible technical benefits from the port, namely that it forces an enumeration of unsafe code boundaries. There's probably something to that, but the big idea is that Anthropic bet that its models could do a big job, and they needed to both demonstrate that and make hay of it. Everything aligned. They did the port. The artisans might call it slop, but it runs, they did it like 2 weeks, and they stuck it to the guy that shuns AI. If you're the type of manager who picks farming out work to a body shop with 100 unskilled workers instead of hiring 2 legitimate FTEs, then this is speaking your language.

anthonypasq 3mo ago
none of this justifies a nasty mean spirited blog post.
- ibejoeb 3mo ago
  I didn't say or imply that it did. I just don't believe that the decision to port bun was based on innate technical merits of zig vs rust. I also don't think that it is entirely meritless, as I mentioned, because now that there's a par rewrite, there is clear delineation of the areas that need to be ported to safe rust. Still, does anyone really think that this would have happened without Anthropic's provocation? I see it like this: Anthropic saw an opportunity to make a splash. Jarred made it happen without directly disparaging zig, but the implication is that zig couldn't cut it. Andrew made it more personal.
  - woodruffw 3mo ago
    I don't understand how a port is a "provocation." That's a very cynical and transactional way of thinking about open source. (As for Anthropic's motivation: only they know. But I suspect that they saw Zig's AI policy as a potentially existential risk, and moved to de-risk their position. That is a technical decision, just not one rooted in the merits of any particular language.)

mekoka 3mo ago

> I can’t conceive of the leadership of the Python or Rust or any other community I’ve ever worked with doing something like that. I'd be prudent to use a clear faux-pas by a BDFL as an argument to push for an alternative, seemingly more consensual, leadership style. I'd also be careful to fall for the apparent lack of overt aggression in the latter type of structures, as a necessarily positive signal. I've seen people in various such communities (including the two cited languages) that have chosen not to interact with their steering committees, because of perceived toxicity. This can and does happen with any kind of structure and can take many shapes, some of whom are too subtle or passive to even accurately pinpoint, in the way you would for example directly index a BDFL. In The Tyranny of Structurelessness Jo Freeman made the case that the lack of a clear structure in the make up of a movement presents with opportunities for very fuzzy power dynamics and related abuses that are also much more challenging to deal with.

woodruffw 3mo ago
Yeah, I don’t mean to detract from the serious communication issues that other ecosystems have. (I don’t think committee/unstructured/BDFL communities do better as a rule, it’s more about the culture that’s promulgated by whoever is at the top, regardless of how many of them there are.)

dundarious 3mo ago

It might be helpful to read the latest revision of Andrew's post, which may address this concern for you. It received several revisions: https://github.com/andrewrk/andrewkelley.me/commits/master/posts/my-thoughts-bun-rust-rewrite.html https://github.com/andrewrk/andrewkelley.me/commits/master/p...

sigmar 3mo ago
To me, this addendum makes it worse. Making small edits to a post like this makes it seem like you're doubling down on the original resentful points, especially with all the new justifications like "a trillion dollar company fired the first shot." Should have just deleted the blog post in its entirety imho. >outstanding relationships with essentially everyone who openly uses Zig and talks about it publicly Essentially everyone? more blogposts incoming?
- dundarious 3mo ago
  >>outstanding relationships with essentially everyone who openly uses Zig and talks about it publicly > Essentially everyone? more blogposts incoming? Andrew is explicitly saying the opposite, but you're entitled to your supposition that that is bluster, I suppose.
0xffff2 3mo ago
I don't think the style of multiple revisions to walk back the most problematic parts really helps the case. It very much leaves me with the impression that the original version is the one that the author really meant, with the revisions being just a weak attempt to deflect criticism.
- dundarious 3mo ago
  So if you leave a post unchanged, it's proof you meant what you wrote; and if you edit it, it's even stronger proof you meant what you wrote, even if the edits signify some change. I understand that many interpretations are open in such things, but this kind of logic seems ridiculous.
3mo ago

colinsane 3mo ago

> The bigger problem with the post is that it talks out of both ends of the mouth: it’s clearly meant as a personal attack, but also insists that it isn’t. my instinct is to step up and defend Andrew: to say that truly, he has strong opinions -- which is to say he _cares_ about doing things right -- but that he's more patient and accommodating than you're judging him to be from this 10,000ft view. that's kinda weird: you might view this as a personal attack _from_ Andrew against Bun and i might view the reactions as personal attacks _against_ Andrew. viewing it through this lens without our preconceptions ought to make either both parties or neither party look bad, i think? i don't know the solution except to highlight the outsized impact that our individual preconceptions play when judging a situation from 10,000ft away.

draw_down 3mo ago
I think it's weird to say crap like "So and so was a stinky manager" and then be like it's not a personal attack! I liked Zed Shaw. I liked Ted Unangst. They made solid technical points and they were kinda mean about it. They didn't act like butter wouldn't melt in their mouths at the same time.
- preg_match 3mo ago
  I would argue your performance as a manager is not a personal attack, it's a professional attack. Calling someone a bad doctor because they routinely botch surgeries isn't a personal attack either. They might be a really good person, but they need to put down the scalpel. Also, none of this is "new" or anything. Jarred openly bragged about overworking his people. Which, okay, fine, maybe that's a philosophy. But then you can't act like essentially saying your own words back at you is somehow an attack. It's just not. People need to be more careful and understand that no, actually, you DO NOT own your perception. Your actions and words both curate your perception and, so sorry, you can't necessarily change it. It's not yours, it's ours.
woodruffw 3mo ago
I want to be very clear: I don't dislike Andrew (or Jarred). Everything I've seen about him suggests that he's a bright and motivated person, and (like a lot of people, including myself) I suspect he struggles with how is tone is read online versus IRL. I'm not judging him as a human being. I just think the post does not accomplish his goals, unless his goal really was to write a personal attack.

overgard 3mo ago

To me it's just highlighting the reality -- Anthropic fired the first shots. I think it's reasonable for people to say, hey, if you're going to trash the reputation of Zig (in a pretend-objective way) then it's entirely fair for people to put in important context that Bun was not written well.

woodruffw 3mo ago
I really struggle to find a plain, non-motivated reading of the Bun's post that could be fairly described as a "trashing." It's a very bland post.
- overgard 3mo ago
  They're suggesting that the bugs are endemic to using Zig and couldn't be prevented by a modified coding style. Then they point out that the well known way to avoid the issue (defer) is "not ergonomic" (really one extra line is that bad?) It seems like a lot of misinformation couched in a reasonable sounding tone, which is par for the course for how these labs operate.
  - woodruffw 3mo ago
    I don’t think the basic idea that Zig is less safe than a language like Rust (and therefore has different classes of “endemic” bugs) is controversial among Zig programmers. The points they make around explicit defers are a lot more subtle than it being too many lines. Quoting: > For Zig code, when exactly should we be running the cleanup code? If we're passing the same *T to many different functions, how do we know when it's no longer accessible and can be cleaned up? How does it work when some functions need to continue to reference the memory after the function is called?
    - overgard 3mo ago
      I've seen plenty of projects in C with way more complexity and far fewer issues than Bun, and C is definitely less safe than Zig. Memory management strategies are not new things! Professional developers learn to use their tools effectively. After reading the article and the connected context I just get the sense that this is a poorly developed codebase. A bad carpenter blames his tools and all that. I agree with the article that this seems to be about culture. A vibe coded port that explicitly uses unsafe in Rust is not going to be any safer. I mean look, I'm sorry, but at this point I cannot take the Bun project seriously. If people are bragging about not-bothering-to-read-the-code and practicing atrocious engineering with LLMs, and then they're like "it's the language's fault!". Yeah, no, I don't buy it. Plenty of people can write applications in languages without automatic memory management without endemic use-after-free issues. As vibe coders like to say: skill issue.

ares623 3mo ago

Andrew didn't make the hit piece out of nowhere, unprovoked. Jared, using Anthropic's multi-billion dollar microphone, painted Zig in a bad light with their first (denied) attempt to merge a vibecoded PR to improve Zig's build times. Then very shortly after that failed attempt, about 11 days later I gather, Jared (again with help from Anthropic's very big microphone) made public the Zig-to-Rust port. So unless you're planning on getting acquihired by Anthropic _and_ planning on porting away from Rust using their tools very publicly, I think you'll be safe from such pieces.

rcxdude 3mo ago
What exactly is Anthropic's multi-billion dollar microphone here?

turtlebits 3mo ago

I appreciate having an opinion vs a bunch of safe words saying nothing. Most CEO communication probably isn't even written by them and has a person-less touch. It's totally fine to get a negative reaction and avoid the project. It's called having human emotions, which is actually healthy. Getting feedback is how you learn and grow as a person.

woodruffw 3mo ago
There’s a difference between having a negative reaction, which is a natural human thing, and talking out of both sides of your mouth. You can also have negative things to say (or just strong opinions) without being indecorous or unkind.