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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jraph an hour ago | parent | next [-]

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.

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woodruffw 42 minutes ago | parent [-]

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.

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skilning 22 minutes ago | parent [-]

> 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 13 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		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.

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faitswulff an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> 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 an hour ago \| parent [-]
		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.)

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4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[deleted]

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etdznots 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

This is not just a random blog post or technical decision, it’s literally a trillion dollar company’s marketing department deciding to attack and slander Zig.

Insane that people + tokens are slobbering to rush to Clownthropic’s defense when the whole migration and subsequent blog post was just sour grapes about the Zig project’s no slop policy.

And this is a warning shot from Anthropic intended to have a chilling effect, we have tens of billions of dollars at our disposal and if you take any stance we don’t like that undermines our narrative we will fuck with your shit and throw billions of dollars of muscle at rewriting you or trying to make you irrelevant.

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woodruffw 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

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.

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embedding-shape 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

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.

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pdimitar 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

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.

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frde_me 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> what semi-celebrity they like the most

The language in question here is maintained by a BDFL, which means that one person has outsized influence on the language, and it's direction.

In this context, I find it reasonable that if someone is ticked off by that BDFL, they might second guess the direction of the language itself. Since the opinions and emotions of that BDFL _will_ end up in the language and it's community.

This is different than some un-associated influencer having an opinion, and using that to choose a language.

	▲	embedding-shape an hour ago \| parent [-]
		> The language in question here is maintained by a BDFL, which means that one person has outsized influence on the language, and it's direction. Seems like a strange perspective, isn't it expected (and even wanted) that if you have a BDFL, they have the most influence on the language and its direction? That's why they're BDFL, that cannot be outsized, it's perfectly sized for what it's explicitly trying to be, that's the entire point. > In this context, I find it reasonable that if someone is ticked off by that BDFL, they might second guess the direction of the language itself. Since the opinions and emotions of that BDFL _will_ end up in the language and it's community. Yeah, I suppose in the new daily reality where we care more about what opinions people hold, rather than what quality, reliability and so on they actually produce, this does make a lot of sense. Personally I never used Linux because of how much I love/despise Torvalds, I've basically never cared about what he thinks, never thought it was important either, as long as Linux continues to work for me.

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woodruffw 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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.)

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embedding-shape 3 hours ago | parent [-]

> 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 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		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.

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themgt 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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!

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threatofrain an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

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 an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Of course you'll buy that because it's only half truth and posting little commentary gives him an edge. See: https://hachyderm.io/@kristoff/116898483283387067
	▲	woodruffw an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		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).

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JuniperMesos 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		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.

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poly2it 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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

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LtWorf 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[flagged]

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woodruffw 2 hours ago | parent [-]

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.

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LtWorf 2 hours ago | parent [-]

[flagged]

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woodruffw 2 hours ago | parent [-]

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.)

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LtWorf an hour ago | parent [-]

I don't work for any AI company so my salary doesn't really depend on what I think about what AI companies do and what their value is.

	▲	woodruffw an hour ago \| parent [-]
		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.