Comment by neoden

1 month ago

I hate to say it, but time is quickly running out for Zig(( AI might never pick it up properly and without that it will never go out of its niche

8 comments

neoden

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shepherdjerred  1 month ago

Are you implying that programming languages are now going to be “frozen” because of AI?

I can understand the source of concern but I wouldn’t expect innovation to stop. The world isn’t going to pause because of a knowledge cutoff date.

  • neoden  1 month ago

    Innovation doesn't go for the sake of innovation itself. Innovation should serve a purpose. And the purpose of having programming languages is to overcome the limitations of human mind, of our attention span, of our ability to manipulate concepts expressed in abstractions and syntax. We don't know how long we'll need this.

    I really like Zig, I wish it appeared several years earlier. But rewriting everything in Zig might just not have practical sense soon.

    • shepherdjerred  1 month ago

      I agree that programming languages will no longer need to be as accessible to humans.

      However there is still a strong argument to be made for protections/safety that languages can provide.

      e.g. would you expect a model (assuming it had the same expertise in each language) to make more mistakes in ASM, C, Zig, or Rust?

      I imagine most would agree that ASM/C would be likely to have the most mistakes simply because fewer constraints are enforced as you go closer to the metal.

      So, while we might not care about how easy it is for a human to read/write, there will still be a purpose for innovation in programming languages. But those innovations, IMO, will be more focused on how to make languages easier for AI.

      3 replies →

hu3  1 month ago

In my experience LLMs are really good at following code examples and constraints (tests).

So even if they don't get to train much on some technology, all you need is some guidance docs in AGENTS.md

There's a plus in being fresh too: LLMs aren't going to be heavily trained on outdated tutorials and docs. Like React for example.

rtfeldman  1 month ago

Claude Opus 4.5 is completely fluent in Zig.

I use it constantly, and it never occurred to me that someone might think there was a problem to be solved there.