Zig v0.17.0(ziglang.org)
137 pointsby ErenayDev2 hours ago7 comments
  • audunwan hour ago
    Would recommend checking out the Zig state of the (tagged) union as well.

    https://youtu.be/zwi5b5xSsKA?is=PTjJJjSnVMdRuZag

    It may surprise some people here to see that Andrew is warming up to using LLMs to discover bugs (inspired by results from SQLlite) and considers it a tool on the path to getting to bug free software.

    • saghm39 minutes ago
      > It may surprise some people here to see that Andrew is warming up to using LLMs to discover bugs (inspired by results from SQLlite) and considers it a tool on the path to getting to bug free software.

      Someone in the thread below says their bug was closed because of mentioning that they use AI to confirm the bug they had encountered. Is he going to go back and reopen all of those now that he learned what pretty much everyone else already knew?

      • idle_zealot25 minutes ago
        > Someone in the thread below says their bug was closed because of mentioning that they use AI to confirm the bug they had encountered

        I don't know about this particular case, but if I saw someone report a bug and as evidence claim they had X Y and Z LLMs verify it I would be pretty upset. If you're going to use an LLM to make a replication, just do that and give me the replication, don't point to your notoriously error-prone tools as though they lend your report credence.

        It's in a similar vein to people who reply to questions with "well Claude says: <chat transcript dump>"

      • mjburgess35 minutes ago
        There's a difference between Opus 4.5 and Astra 6
        • f33d517332 minutes ago
          With regards to whether when it finds a legitimate bug, it should be given weight?
    • kasajian31 minutes ago
      Andrew is a real weird guy. On one hand, he's innovative enough to see possibilities which made him create Zig, but at the same time it boggles the mind that an such an intelligent person can be so utterly stupid when it comes to LLMs. Makes me wonder what other stupid decisions he makes, tbh.
  • jabedude2 hours ago
    How is Zig doing as a project? I remember they took a hard line against AI
    • agentultraan hour ago
      They seem to be doing fine. Tigerbeetle and Ghostty are two projects that continue to do well and are written in Zig. The foundation’s funding also seems to be doing well. They are continuing to make releases.
    • abc42an hour ago
      It looks like they're spending 5 months what should be a 1 month job these days.
      • onlyrealcuzzoan hour ago
        Filed a compiler bug related to dwarf tables that screws up debugging and line of code coverage that they completely ignored, just because I mentioned that I had every LLM check it to confirm it's a bug, since all I know is what kcov and every coverage tool generates incorrect coverage data for my repo, for 100% certain.
        • bendmorrisan hour ago
          Sounds like you violated the clearly stated project rules and admitted to it. Are you surprised that they're not engaging with you?
          • giancarlostoro30 minutes ago
            Reading their comment it sounds like they wanted to confirm the bug existed with AI, not sure they ever said they had AI write the code. Why have such a dumb policy?
          • unclad5968an hour ago
            It's a violation of project rules to confirm bugs with AI?
            • bendmorrisan hour ago
              Read it yourself: https://ziglang.org/code-of-conduct/
              • sigmar43 minutes ago
                >If you use a chatbot to give you advice on a comment on the issue tracker, that comment is unwelcome.

                >No LLMs for finding bugs.

                >No talking about use of chatbot/LLM services.

                I've said it before and I'll say it again- it's a cult that bans dissent

                • tolerance3 minutes ago
                  > The Zig community is decentralized. Anyone is free to start and maintain their own community, which is not subject to these rules.
                • alexrp36 minutes ago
                  For the record, there isn't even uniformity of thought on LLMs within the core team, let alone the broader Zig community.
                  • sigmar29 minutes ago
                    If there's an edict that no one is allowed to bring up the topic, how can someone change this part of the code of conduct?

                    Asking non-rhetorically. It seems like one position "ai in any circumstance = bad" is being enforced. The commenter above didn't even understand why he was ignored.

            • jibaltan hour ago
              Yes ... pretty damn stupid.
          • saghm36 minutes ago
            Pointing out something that is not good doesn't require surprise at the fact that it happened
          • phoghed39 minutes ago
            Yeah, the maintainers of a DOA hobby project should certainly be allowed to run it however they want imo
          • IshKebaban hour ago
            Wow I thought surely they wouldn't object to using AI to confirm bugs, but they really do.

            Tbf I guess as a popular open source project not using AI to fix bugs, they probably already have more open bugs than they can ever fix so it doesn't really help them for people to find more.

            I would imagine his bug was actually ignored just because Zig has 2700 open bugs, rather than some AI policy violation.

            • bendmorrisan hour ago
              Claude Code has 13.4k open bugs: https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues

              Show me a popular open source project that doesn't have a large number of open issues and I'll show you one that has a triage bot auto-close them.

            • audunwan hour ago
              They don’t, at least not any more. Andrew Kelley has explicitly stated that he sees the value of using LLMs to uncover bugs. Inspired by sqllite project.

              https://youtu.be/zwi5b5xSsKA?is=PTjJJjSnVMdRuZag

              They may just be taking the slow route of rejecting by default until they can be sure that the usage of LLMs provides long term value. I don’t see anything wrong with that. If you’re writing robust software, using LLMs at this stage is a bit of a gamble. We don’t fully know the long term effects on code quality yet.

              • saghm36 minutes ago
                Ah, so yet another language in the long line of "I'm smart enough to use this but you the user are not"
                • unleaded30 minutes ago
                  Project maintainers know what level of AI use is acceptable for themselves, and quantifying it and enforcing it for random contributors is very difficult.
            • acedTrexan hour ago
              The popular LLM projects have infinitely many more bugs than the zig project does this is a ridiculous message.
        • doctorpangloss27 minutes ago
          Their policy is immature. Clicking little upvote and downvote buttons is immature. Better to just lie and duplicate the issue.
          • senderista19 minutes ago
            Seems like "parallel construction" where you show you actually understand and can explain the issue independent of an LLM would be the way to go. No need to mention how you found the bug as long as you can explain what the bug is, why it matters, and how to repro.
          • bigstrat200311 minutes ago
            Lying to get around a project policy you disagree with is immature. They have the right to run things the way they want, either accept their rules or leave the project be.
        • acedTrexan hour ago
          > breaks the project rules

          > gets ignored

          Who could have forseen this.

        • UncleOxidantan hour ago
          If they really insist on no LLM involvement at all then they're going to fall behind and lose out. Your LLM use case seems really very conservative - you didn't write any code with it, you just use it to confirm the bug. There are many OSS projects that are also taking a similar hardline against LLMs - people are going to fork them and then move on. I've had LLMs fix bugs/add features to a couple of projects like this and, well, they're missing out on the fixes/added features that I'm using locally.
          • acedTrexan hour ago
            They are doing fine, all this "left behind" talk has no basis other than cope.
      • greggoBan hour ago
        Can you offer any specifics? The ToC looks quite extensive, which to me indicates a lot of design decisions needed to be made (probably involving many people) and unclear how that process might be accelerated by AI.

        Unless you're suggesting the language design should also be vibed together?

        • nvme0n1p1an hour ago
          > Unless you're suggesting the language design should also be vibed together?

          Sounds like a fun little project, have a bunch of AI pushers fork Zig and see if they can do a better job. I want to see results, not snarky HN comments. After all this progress, ChatGPT should be able to one-shot a better language since AI is so good now... right?

          • agentultraan hour ago
            Claude can’t one-shot a C compiler.

            None of these systems can. They need enormous training. They need alignment and reinforcement. They need harnesses. And most importantly they need a human that knows how to write and develop a C compiler.

            The ISO specifications are not sufficient. Neither are the System V guidelines. Not even spec tests and compcert.

          • spankaleean hour ago
            One-shot, no, but there are a bunch of people pretty much solo-building their personal ideal language with AI and it's going quite well. You need to know just enough about language design to be dangerous, but you don't need to be a seasoned pro.

            I'm doing it myself: https://zena-lang.dev/

            • Karrot_Kreaman hour ago
              Been thinking about doing this myself (did some PL in grad school but it's been a long time), but I find myself wanting to reach for a Scheme (using macros to grow the language I want) and customize it or build something atop Janet.

              Curious why you wanted a more ML / Rust / Scala inspired syntax. (Personal preference here is totally valid btw, just curious.)

          • UncleOxidantan hour ago
            You're not going to one-shot it, but over the course of a couple of months of evenings you could come up with something usable/interesting if you manage the LLM well.
          • IshKebaban hour ago
            Nobody is one-shotting big projects. Even humans can't do that.
            • DASD24 minutes ago
              Fabrice Bellard might be an exception.
      • dingdingdangan hour ago
        Yep, it's true, but the reality of what it would take to actually fork and commence with healthy use of AI alongside with the elusive soft/hard stance needed to lead technically and socially is probably a bigger challenge than anyone is willing to take on! Soo.. slow and (rather?) well it goes for Zig.
      • mg74an hour ago
        Slow and steady wins the race
        • saghm34 minutes ago
          And apparently ignores legitimate compiler bugs on the way that someone happened to ask an LLM to double check their diagnosis
        • jibaltan hour ago
          Parables aren't reality.
        • re-thcan hour ago
          Anthropic levels of slowness (pacing)?
        • mathisfun123an hour ago
          in tech? really?
          • combobyte6 minutes ago
            Language design and implementation is much more in the realm of actual computer science than it is "tech"
          • Zakan hour ago
            In programming languages, usually. Building software on top of a rapidly-changing language is not often a recipe for success.
            • 31 minutes ago
              undefined
          • nvme0n1p1an hour ago
            Yes, the Lindy effect applies in tech too.
    • acedTrexan hour ago
      Im really enjoying using it, works great tbh
    • DASDan hour ago
      Seems to be C++ing which is disappointing. Looking more at C3 and Odin for cases where I'd hoped Zig to land.
      • deagle50an hour ago
        Odin scratches this “stick shift” itch for me better than anything else. Highly recommended.
      • zer0-c00lan hour ago
        can you elaborate on what you mean by "C++ing"?
      • sureglymopan hour ago
        C3 is honestly so good and a bit underrated.
        • silisili43 minutes ago
          It's my favorite of the new round of languages by far. I just wish it had a bigger ecosystem.
  • internet200010 minutes ago
    Any change to the AI policy?
  • luiwammusan hour ago
    Although I understand that upgrading LLVM version is a lot of work, it's a bit frustating that loop vectorization is still disabled.
    • vitaminCPP6 minutes ago
      You should not worry. They said they would make a short release cycle for updating to 23.
    • alexrpan hour ago
      The fix could not be backported to LLVM 22 because it changed the LLVM library ABI. We also could not skip straight to LLVM 23 because that would make life harder for distro package maintainers.
  • ai_critican hour ago
    > Please consider a recurring donation so that we can offer more billable hours to our core team members.

    Just don't be surprised if the project BFDL talks shit about you or your company later.

    (Still a good language though, credit where credit is due.)

    • dimator28 minutes ago
      would you rather the reverse to be true? if someone donates enough that's sufficient for the BDFL to silence their opinions?
      • preommr15 minutes ago
        yes.

        A simple, "this entity is a sponsor, and therefore there is a conflict of interest and we will not comment on recent controversy" is enough.

        If it's big enough, refuse to take further contributions.

        I know it's not entertaining, but that's why we have video games.

    • senderista16 minutes ago
      I wouldn't consider donating until the project leader has demonstrated considerably more personal maturity.
  • bricss23 minutes ago
    [flagged]