Comment by tuckwat
2 days ago
This is unprofessional and embarrassing for Zig.
I know very little about Jared but his article yesterday, which I read, seemed appreciative of Zig. I now learn he's donated significant chunks of money to them.
This entire article is publicly and personally attacking him for choosing a different product.
It's insane to me that Andrew thinks this post will somehow exonerate Zig when it really just makes them look childish. Or maybe he doesn't care, and just wants to attack Jarred?
How is it unprofessional when it is simply someone giving their honest personal opinion on an issue that involves something that is valuable to them, on their personal blog nonetheless.
Is everyone a walking and talking brand now so that they have to always filter their words, walk on eggshells, hide behind corpo-speak so as to seem 'professional'?
More honest discourse is required in today's world, not less. It seems interactions online are becoming less and less authentic.
> Those people talked to each other. Everybody talked to everybody. The grapevine was large and healthy and full of juicy grapes, and all those grapes contained the juice of the same message: Jarred was a stinky manager.
There’s a big gap between corpo speak and “stinky manager”. That’s nowhere close to professional writing. And he’s not giving us his personal opinion, Kelley is telling us the conclusion of the “grape vine” - he’s reporting on rumors and gossip, and agreeing with it.
Why does this person owe you "professional writing" on their personal blog?
27 replies →
Treat it as a data point and make your own decisions (he does back it up with several sources that indicate a workaholic mentality with that expectation for others). Hiding it ends up perpetuating the behavior unseen.
*Below is an aside that explains why I think it's better to air these things even if it seems like "rumors and gossip."
I know first hand how toxic some people are irl compared to their public persona. There was a professor in my department during my PhD who was known to be a slave driver, but there are no accounts of it outside of the department. We would have to warn incoming students about working with her, though sometimes they wouldn't believe it could be as bad as we said. I spoke with one of her students after she left the lab due to being hospitalized for exhaustion from overwork: the professor contacted her while she was still hospitalized and asked her to complete a task ffs!
Honest and professional is not the same, to summarize. You can be both, but you definitely can be honest and unprofessional or even childish. Children are very honest for example.
Yes, “corpo-speak” is the language of professionalism.
It's also a language of distancing from personal experience and honesty.
Not saying you're wrong. Professionalism is an important tool for maintaining professional relationships. Lack of professionalism is dangerous to the point where it is reasonable for certain kinds of societies to begin to shun people who don't engage with it.
And, at the same time, a certain amount of emotional honesty can be really important to share, too. And that includes some amount of judgement and criticism.
It sounds like Zig's relationship with Bun is over. While Anthropic/Jason/Bun did not write a personal narrative about the end of that relationship, they absolutely were the initiators and could not have done this in a more aggressive way. It feels to me to be approximately the equivalent of moving out in secret and serving the divorce documents through your lawyer.
1 reply →
Nah, corpo-speak is the original slop. The result of too many comms/legal inputs to a conversation.
Professional communication is direct, clear, and ideally courteous (but only to a point).
9 replies →
Did you actually read it ? "Stinky manager" "alreay writing slop before llm" and nore insults, cmon now...
The wanna cancel Andrew and Zig by extension for hot-takes.
> This is unprofessional and embarrassing for Zig.
It is. It's also why Anthropic and Bun moved off Zig.
Zig is effectively a one-man show, and that one man has been making increasingly erratic decisions.
It's his project so it's well within his rights, of course. But when you're a ~trillion dollar company you don't want to get hit by a supply chain risk like this.
For Anthropic, it's better to nip this in the bud rather than invest more into the Zig ecosystem, where there's a demonstrated risk of the not-so-BDFL going off the rails.
I think the blog post was cringe, but the part with relieving a burden stuck with me. I don't think its acceptable to have trillion dollar companies or companies at all sit on your neck using your project in a way you don't like and subtly influencing its trajectory just because they want to make money. License back and forth, but it doesn't feel right to me personally. Its like the guy who wrote the stuff that is used for the intrusive Intel IME. Now pair that with the tasteless LLM and AI narratives and you got yourself into a big dilemma.
Let's say you make a language and try stuff out but its used by facebook and suddenly you find yourself in calls solving problems for them but you never really wanted to end up in this situation or work with people from such in environment. Meanwhile the compensation/donation does not match the value they are extracting from your work. Hard to say, I'm very mixed on this.
If he's so relieved that Bun/Anthropic are off Zig, then why trash Jarred? He should say thank you and move on.
What this looks like to me is Jarred sinned by selling to Anthropic (as opposed to setting up a 501c3 or whatever Andrew deems righteous) and now must be discredited.
At the end of the day our personal feelings matter very little unless we happen to be the authoritarian dictator or we are the type of personality that gets other people to follow our cause.
In a more just society we setup the rule of law so when you pick a license you have the ability to enforce it without being completely destroyed by a larger entity. When you set your license to 'do whatever you want' then this is causality. You cannot interact with the world and expect it not to affect you, both positive or negative.
What does this mean for the future of the open source world? Not really sure there is a lot up in the air right now. Maybe more 'fuck you' licenses that scare corporations from using your software in the first place. Who knows.
> It's insane to me that Andrew thinks this post will somehow exonerate Zig when it really just makes them look childish.
Antirez made a post equivalent to: you'd be a fool not to use AI to increase test coverage.
Zig on the other hand has embarrassingly low test coverage given its adoption and time in development.
Their stance on AI is completely childish. They could benefit massively from it, yet refuse to even consider any potential usage.
It's one thing to try to stop PR spam. It's another thing to tie your hands behind your back and not even use it internally for the lowest hanging fruit where it could have major benefits.
They could use AI to triage potential real bugs from PR spam... but instead they just let real bugs go unnoticed for longer than need be because they won't even use AI to help triage...
in what way is it chidlish to have a principled position like this? you may disagree, i def use llms. but andrew has clear reasons for why he doesnt.
Childish or no, anti-AI sentiment is ubiquitous and growing.
From a PR perspective there’s a lot to gain in the short term by picking the “anti-AI” lane. And you can always change your mind later.
Surveys show that 60% of US adults don't like it which means 40% either don't care or do. I'd advise not getting your ideas about sentiment towards it from places like HN which are very biased and unrepresentative places of anything.
I find the anti crowd increasingly to be hateful and close-minded and it is disappointing because I have a lot of friends in it. There's a moral puritanism which gives people feelings that they are on the "right" side and thus any level of rudeness or hatred is justified and it only hurts their side.
4 replies →
Or perhaps it's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_innovations and the people with anti-AI sentiment are called "laggards". If so, their amount will likely be near zero soon.
This has happened thousands of times in human history.
1 reply →
Is popular sentiment a good measure for a decision? Anti lots of things have been growing at some points in history, including bad things.
1 reply →
It's ubiquitous among dinosaurs. Don't worry. They will be left behind.
7 replies →
I am fine with people having principles and doing things their way. Not everything has to be a race to be the best. There are still plenty of people that appreciate traditional crafts. Anyway, if Zig+AI can be the next, greatest thing, can't someone just fork it and make it happen?
No one cares enough of zig to do it, people will just continue moving to Rust and similar.
1 reply →
People are doing the simpler thing: moving ecosystems more suppotive of their goal.
> Zig on the other hand has embarrassingly low test coverage
And? Why would low test coverage matter. It’s not an indication of project quality nor does a high coverage mean an absence of bugs or errors.
> This entire article is publicly and personally attacking him for choosing a different product
The article seems to be happy about the switch to Rust, that point is re-iterated multiple times in the article, and seemingly they were both awaiting Bun moving away from Zig and wishing for it.
The post has a lot of incel "well you're ugly and noone wants you anyway" energy
I think the article kind of gives you the energy you enter the reading with.
My take away was closer to "This is what we tried, this is the sentiment they gave back, then this is what happened, here's what I think of Jarred's way of working, glad they now use Rust, good riddance", but then I also apply this slightly unholy strategy of applying charitable reading when reading personal blog posts, and I worship neither of these people, so might be why we got slightly different takeaways.
4 replies →
I feel the same way as you do. Honestly, even though it was well-packaged, I did find it a bit rude. But since I don't know their personal relationship, it's not really my place to interfere.
The people who steal with AI and give no credit to the actual creative forces (that they are stamping out) are the fucking rude ones.
I just return to them the kindness they show me when they say, "You made this?? I made this!!"
18 replies →
No, it's embarrassing being obsessed with good tone to the point that people behaving badly should never be called out for it.
The article provides good background into how it got to this point - and it fits well with doing an opportunistic AI rewrite after being acquired by an AI provider.
It is not about good tone it's about not being hateful and rude. Why is this that hard to pick apart?
Why do devs believe being rude is somehow a sign of honesty? They are orthogonal. This post needed none of the mean-spirited attacks that it contained to make its points. It is only hurt by the attacks as seen by the focus on "tone" throughout these comments.
It's all about tone. The original bad behavior is done without overt "bad tone" but if the response to it is spicy then the former is ignored and the latter is condemned despite being of lesser severity.
I can buy that it can be good corporate politics to not upset the superficial crowd that will immediately lash out on tone, but I will not judge someone rightfully reacting on bad behavior that they've been on the receiving end of.
Also, I didn't say being rude is a sign of honesty, that's you extrapolating.
10 replies →
What you are asking for is a slippery slope.
The history of humanity is full of biting polemics and attacks on the character of others, just read Voltaire. Sometimes, attacks are deserved.
Yes, a world in which everyone is professional and "plays nice" sounds great but it also quickly becomes a mechanism for suppression of the truth. Not the situation here, but "decorum" expectations are sometimes precisely one of the functions that help bad people maintain power (consider how difficult it can be for minorities or marginalized people to speak truthfully about what's happened to them). Sometimes one person being blunt, honest, and a little rude is a necessary step in clearing ground for others to be more upfront about the bad behavior of individuals.
The argument isn't to avoid calling out "bad" behaviour, it's that you can do so with a professional (or at least not actively childish) tone. Using phrases like "stinky manager" while taking multiple jabs at Jarred's personal and educational background (implying by not going to university he was too stupid to think critically about his path forward) paints a weirdly childish yet elitist viewpoint. The blog post reads as vindictive, akin to something along the lines of "screw you kid, glad to be rid of you, and thanks for the $120,000 btw."
I don't interact with Zig or Bun, but I certainly haven't been enticed to try Zig after this.
I'm sorry but I honestly think this is just being superficial wanting to push it through some kind of corporate speak filter to be able to stomach it.
> Using phrases like "stinky manager"
I would've used a worse adjective given the WLB tweet etc. Is it just because stinky itself has a childish tone to it rather than something like shitty? Or do one need to reach to somewhat open-ended terms like "questionable" to be palatable?
> implying by not going to university he was too stupid to think critically about his path forward
I read that as emphasizing the Thiel Fellowship part, not the lack of university education.
> I don't interact with Zig or Bun, but I certainly haven't been enticed to try Zig after this.
I'm so tired of "I've never played [game] & have never had any intention to play [game] whatsoever, but given [newfound-grievance] I wont buy it!"-style dismissals - talking about childishness.
1 reply →
Agreed. This article should have stuck to the cold facts, rather than a series of personal criticisms that you wouldn’t see written out in the workplace.
Sadly there are far too many open source developers out there who are far too comfortable writing like this. It’s one reason I have stopped being active in open source. You would be fired (or at least disciplined) from any reasonable workplace if you acted like this.
you are right, to many people feel far to comfortable writing like this. but my reaction is to double down and be more active to counter this kind of expression and make it clear that this is not welcome. it worked with linus torvalds.
That’s a good attitude to have. Any tips for identifying projects which have leadership which does this?
1 reply →
> I now learn he's donated significant chunks of money to them.
Biting the hand that feeds you might make you an asshole. But sometimes you have to be an asshole to uphold standards and principles. I don't think Linus or Jobs would be known to produce such important technology if they don't care enough about their works to act crudely to people they consider substandard.
We can disagree with Andrew's standards of course. But saying he should not attack someone just because he took money from him is a weak criticism.
It's kind of strange to not engage with any of the points made in the article. Unlike you, I don't think the post makes them look childish at all. I think it raises a lot of valid points and makes me want to use Zig more.
> It's kind of strange to not engage with any of the points made in the article. Unlike you, I don't think the post makes them look childish at all. I think it raises a lot of valid points and makes me want to use Zig more.
I know nothing about the drama here other than what's in the blog post, but these feel more like unnecessarily public personal attacks which don't really reflect well:
- a stinky manager. Poor communication, unrealistic expectations, low empathy, no experience. Just a total shit show, from an employment perspective
- already writing slop well before he had access to LLMs
- their vague "sell some cloud something" business plan was a farce
I also know nothing of the drama, but what I picked up from the first blog post was that even with access to near unlimited funds and unreleased god-tier coding llms from a trillion dollar AI corporation it was apparently impossible to fix a backlog of bugs in Zig code but it was possible to fix them by automatically doing a rewrite in rust.
I can see why that might feel like an existential attack on Zig even if starts with a bit about how great Zig is.
So pointing out that the zig code was full of bugs because the author was doing weird stuff and ignoring advice, couldn't hire/retain any good Zig devs because he mismanaged people and is the kind of guy to do a full rewrite because that's more interesting than fixing bugs or learning the old tools feels like stuff he'd want out there in the public domain.
5 replies →
> I actually don't have any personal criticisms of Jarred.
was the cherry on top.
22 replies →
Maybe the only quoted text that I would read as a personal attack is
"already writing slop well before he had access to LLMs" and maybe "low empathy".
Just because the other bits are negative and not so nice pieces of feedback one wouldn't want to hear doesn't necessarily make them attacks.
An attack is often far more personal (making fun of you for aspects of your existence you can't control, touching personal subjects like families, etc). idk, maybe I'm just not soaked enough in the goo goo baby corporate saccharine LLM speak or something but this post felt tame to me, if a bit cheeky. Nothing but a thumb jab at worst.
What points? All I'm reading is just a collection of emotional ad-hominems.
The points in the article aren't great. It opens up personal and stays personal. As people in this thread have pointed out, several of the falsifiable bits turn out to be false.
The big thing though is, you get to the end of it and have to ask: why did this need to be written at all?
"It's almost like the marketing department of a trillion dollar company has a lot of money riding on this article."
He does get that Anthropic is Don Draper in the elevator meme here, right?
Anthropic's niche is that they're the preferred model for software development currently. So, the reason for them to care about the rewrite is obviously not because they care about Bun's stability, but because it is the largest real-world demonstration of Claude's capabilities.
Every part of this saga has gotten an exceptional amount of attention on HN. HN is ostensibly filled with many people starting software-related companies, ie potential Anthropic customers.
1 reply →
Unless you're implying that Anthropic is actually threatened by Zig here (???) and perhaps even is working to sabotage it, I could not think of a worse meme to reference. I honestly find your comment confusing.
4 replies →
Yes, perhaps Jarred is professionally dishonest, making up fake conversations about Zig. That is the most salient point in the whole article, and Jarred shows up to simply post receipts with kind words and minimal commentary.
Would you like to discuss that point as a fellow professional in the field?
FWIW I was really interested in Zig and now I see that its lead developer is thin-skinned and bitter and has confused minimal criticism of his project with an attack on his person.
This is such a bad look and it's also flatly self-contradictory. He spends time in his conclusion asserting he doesn't have any personal criticisms of Jarred but he's fully happy to claim, reframe and repeat everyone else's, even criticisms he evidently heard in private.
You can also see that it was incompletely rewritten from a pure, personalised and personally-directed rant: "I noticed that you…" does not belong with the rest of the text.
Whatever the merits of Claude-driven rewrites (I suspect few, long-term), the article he is responding to has little to none of the vituperative quality of his own.
I think if it needed a response, and I was this angry, I would have written this whole post as a draft, filed it away in Apple Notes, and then posted "I have, yes, seen the article on the Bun blog; you don't need to send me it anymore! I will respond to parts of it in the future as and when they are particularly relevant."
Writing the response post can be valuable as emotional release or exploration. Posting it in this sprawling, mean form was dumb.
This entire thread puts me out on devs. I stuns me that there are this many people who either excuse or cheer on being hateful. Wanting to use a project becaues the author was this rude....what?
Just a complete lack of emotional intelligence. You do not treat people like this.
3 replies →
>Posting it in this sprawling, mean form was dumb.
Thank you for putting my thoughts in words I can never string together so well.
I too would just stash the letter in my ZFS dropbox and never let it see the light of day again.
The letter reads like a husband who was just served a divorce notice from his wife. The man is angry, and wants everyone to know that he is not angry, and he is very much not bothered by the whole affair even though he has misgivings since the first day of marriage.
The letter would be much more convincing if it has any technical rebuttal against the decision.
2 replies →
Do you have bias? I'm not saying I don't have some hidden bias but I have no skin in the game. I don't use Bun or Zig or plan to.
My reflection comes after reading Jarred's post yesterday, which I found interesting, and then Andrew's today.
I just pasted this article into an LLM to understand the tone and the summary is:
> The overall tone is deeply personal, cathartic, biting, and polemical, with flashes of humor and a deliberate attempt to soften the ending.
Did you have a hard time picking that up from the article itself? I don’t see the point of asking an LLM to tell you what to feel about the article.
4 replies →
I'm glad that you asserted that you do have potential hidden bias and say that you used an LLM to judge the tone of an article partly pertaining to AI usage in coding right after.
3 replies →
I think I have some bias. I like rust. I like using opus, I don't want to use zig, don't see the point for it, but I find it aesthetically pleasing. I don't use JavaScript I wish it would disappear. If I did ise JavaScript I wouldn't run it on bun. Some of those tilt me either way. I agree with the LLMs take on the tone. The result of the two posts is that I think Jarred is a poopyhead, andrew is a bit childish but genuine and I'd probably like him, and I still won't use zig or bun or JavaScript. I plan to keep using rust and opus.
> I just pasted this article into an LLM to understand the tone
That's your brain's job, don't outsource it.
Uhm, I'm very confused by the last part of your comment. You put it into an LLM to...understand the tone? Is that supposed to convince me of something?
11 replies →
Bun is better in rust and they can finally break up their relationship.
It's not a happy breakup, but not a super sad one either.
Please, I'm begging you, and the people that scan across this comment: Finishing mastering reading comprehension; It will help you for the rest of your life.
I'm not snarking, this is a problem affecting 30% or more of the population here in the states, and it's getting worse because of tools like AI. I'm not judging you, I don't think you are bad or deficient people, but this externalsing of comprehension and trust is self-harm.
Worse, it will lead you astray in ways that you won't tie back to this core problem.
To use an LLM safely you must have the discernment to understand when it has fallen into sycophancy, folly, or madness.
1 reply →
I don't think it's too bad, but I also don't think it's good.
I also don't think Andrew can claim at the end "I actually don't have any personal criticisms of Jarred" when the post includes the sentence "Jarred was already writing slop well before he had access to LLMs".
It accuses him of presiding over “a shitshow”, and basically seems to imply he’s a greedy narcissist.
So, yes, I find that line laughably disingenuous.
> It's insane to me that Andrew thinks this post will somehow exonerate Zig
I'm not sure that's his aim here. I imagine he has been asked dozens of times what he thinks about the switch, what it means for Zig, etc. etc. and wanted to just address it one time, which is understandable.
The tone is... strong. I think repeating grapevine rumours about Jarred's management skills adds very little and probably could have been removed. But at its heart I see this post as example of a common clash: open source code hackers vs Silicon Valley "growth hackers".
Kelley is disappointed that a promising Zig project took VC money and went from his passion project's prime example to one that shit talked it on the way out. I get why he's emotional. I wouldn't have written it the way he did but I also don't think policing tone is beneficial for honest communication.
There are entire businesses built on sharing "through the grapevine" what management style and working conditions are like at various employers. People want to know these things!
Instead of posting on Glassdoor or whatever the latest iteration of that is, Andrew just wrote it out here (and linked to a forum to back up the claim).
Since you know very little about Jarred, why are you not investigating all of the issues raised about how Jarred has run that project from the get-go?
It's not childish in the least for someone who does know the background to point out those issues.
I got the opposite impression from reading the post. Perhaps this is a Goldilocks situation?
I don't think it's an attack, more like a goodbye.
Andrew is happy bun is not zig anymore because it was not up to the level they would expect from a project that represents them.
Isn't this what makes it so strange, though? You didn't see K&R publish "so-and-so writes bad C", or Stroustrup decrying the Boost maintainers as hacks. Linus used to do this sort of thing, but mostly to things that directly affected the kernel, and even that eventually led to changed behavior and a code of conduct.
The post disclaims the ambassador relationship, but treats Bun as having all of the responsibility of being an ambassador anyway. If Bun is in Zig's house, like the monthly meetings and the core team code review suggest, then somehow the outcome reflects on Zig. If not, then that's fine, but then it begins and ends at "They were a project written in Zig, and now they're not". He can't have both "It's their fault because their code was slop" and "it's not my business".
> You didn't see K&R publish "so-and-so writes bad C", or Stroustrup decrying the Boost maintainers as hacks.
The world is completely different now. The VC fuelled culture was not as intense and LLMs certainly didn’t exist at all. Andrew calls out these factors explicitly.
> He can't have both "It's their fault because their code was slop" and "it's not my business".
Huh? But it was his business when they had a relationship. Seems he was trying his best to work with them while they were getting funding and Bun was interested in them. That’s the nice thing to do no? Even if you don’t like the partner.
Imagine if the Zig foundation broke the relationship from their side, that would have been much worse.
I don’t think Andrew was trying to say it wasn’t his business in that way. But in the end he couldn’t control what Bun did or didn’t do, and now it’s not his business in any way.
1 reply →
how is it attacking him for using a different product? except for compile times nothing here even indicates that rust would be a bad choice for bun
Before the post I didn't know what zig and bun is. I needed a llm to explain it to me. Now I think about trying Zig. So, no, I don't think it's childish. It reads like a engineer that knows which kind of people you don't need in your environment. I can feel every word he wrote because I know this situations.
I don't think he is attacking, he's just organising his thoughts publicly.
While organizing his thoughts publicly, Andrew says that the Bun team at large engages in outright fabrication. What do we think about that? Does Jarred and his team lie about professional matters to fellow peers in the field?
Maybe their concept of fuzzing is different?
Jarred commented on the top that they use fuzzilli , which is a javascript engine fuzzer.
But zig has a built in integrated fuzzer!
Andrew must have been talking about the built in fuzzer because that's what is associated with zig.
zig build test --fuzz
2 replies →
Sorry just organizing my thoughts on your comment publicly:
This person is credulous and naive, and I should take care to remember that if I see comments from them in the future.
I would block you so you don't get exposed to my naivety lol but I don't know how. But take note so you don't comment on me next time.
Totally agree. This article really turned me off of ever using Zig for a project.
> This entire article is publicly and personally attacking him for choosing a different product.
Well, TFA has a conveniently titled section "Addressing the Blog Post", that raises (setting aside speculation) some good points:
It reminded me of the Church of Scientology lashing out at a Suppressive Person.
I think he also wants to attack Anthropic by proxy.
You really think people should hide their honest opinions about others because they receive money from them?
What an awful corporate mindset.
None of Human civilization would exist if the norm was to share your unfiltered opinions about other people. It has nothing to do with “corporate”.
It’s just so unbelievably immature, and I know of no other industry where this is common.
Don't call Australia uncivilised, kicking against the pricks is a national identity.
I almost completely disagree.
Unprofessional? Maybe a little, but honest, and while the truth isn't flattering to Jarred, I'd say generally kind.
Embarrassing? Not from my seat. Andrew is just revealing the relationship dynamics between a principled programming language developers and pragmatic business users of that language.
I had already inferred a bunch that this post confirms based on the agentic port from forked-Zig to Rust. It's very nice to have suspicions confirmed.
How can you say that a post which has the criticisms it does is kind?
How is it kind to imply that by not going to university, Jarred was too stupid to think critically about his own path in life? Or just this in its entirety: "Jarred was a stinky manager. Poor communication, unrealistic expectations, low empathy, no experience. Just a total shit show, from an employment perspective."
We have very different ideas about what kindness looks like. Honesty and rudeness are not synonyms.
> I'd say generally kind.
How is saying someone wrote “slop” and is stinky kind?
I can’t understand these comments that claim the article was generally kind, unless you and I read different articles with different words.
I legitimately had to go back and check that the article hadn’t been edited to remove some of the ad hominems
The answer is likely some form of different expectations. You expected the behavior not to be the topic. Where as I assume, other people are upset by the behavior of bun et al, and because this reply was somewhat measured, it seemed more polite then they expected.
I think you're assumption that it's 'filled with ad hominem attacks' is good evidence for that. I'd have to go back, and go line by line to be sure, but there are no ad hominem attacks. Ad hominem has a specific meaning: arguing against the person, instead of the argument. If the argument is about the behavior of a person, then unless one of those people is a party to the argument, it's exceptionally unlikely to be an ad hominem attack.
Argument: you can't trust the quality of the code $person produces. They mostly release slop code.
Neither are ad hominem: because words mean things. They're attacks against the code quality, and reputation of the subject. But they're not ad hominem. You may not like the opinion. But that doesn't make it an inappropriate attack against the person, the behavior and decisions they've made and the impact those decisions have had, are the topic of the post.
I guess technically, he takes shots at claude which no doubt wrote large sections of this? But I also would object to calling that ad hominem, and doubt that's what you meant?
Finally, even if I did agree the argument that the language in the blog post targets the speaker, more than it addresses the topic wasn't stupid, (I don't agree, it is a stupid idea). The social responsibility/contract to: never do anything publicly that might be considered an attack; was released when bun decided to comment publicly with disputed facts.
Oh no, someone wrote a blog post as a response and refutation to an otherwise unprovoked public post spreading what the author considers misinformation about something they care about?! Maybe they shouldn't have said anything?
How much politeness do you feel is owed? Why are the critiques enumerated improper? I'm honestly curious if you have reasons that I just can't see? Or if it's just vibes based? You don't like how it feels, and that's your objection? Ideally something like: this specific quote is completely off-topic, and exists not to express an idea important to the author, but near exclusively to insult a person. So that I can understand why you see insults that I can't see. If it's true, I can't consider it an insult.
Last question: would all your objections go mostly/completely away if every paragraph was prefixed by "In my opinion"?
People seem to have adopted very liberal definitions of "personal attack".
When someone criticizes you for things you could improve on that are within your control, it may be difficult to hear, but it is not a personal attack. Someone calling you a stink manager, and listing factors as to why (unreasonable expectations etc.) is not a personal attack.
Someone talking about the inexperience you used to have (being a beginner developer) is not a personal attack.
Someone listing your business decisions (taking VC money, etc) is not a personal attack.
Maybe the only comment in this entire piece that is remotely close to an "attack" is the bit about slop code, but even that, being about the person's work and not the person and aspects of their existence they cannot control or their personal lives, is hardly personal.
I find it really baffling that HN seems to be so sensitive to what's, in my opinion, a relatively tame post with maybe some prickly flavor (which imo is completely understandable given the complete nonsense that had ensured with Bun post acquisition and their very public, and I think unfair, negative portrayal of Zig, intentional or not).
> This is unprofessional and embarrassing for Zig
This isn’t like the official stance of the zig foundation or anything. I for one am happy to see people being honest about their frustrations instead of playing politics.
> Or maybe he doesn't care, and just wants to attack Jarred?
I've worked with ark enough that I think I've started to learn his default style, or at the very least to know that from him; this isn't an attack. If that was your read, I think you're taking more from sources that aren't this post.
I wonder if you're confusing statements of fact, for attacks? They're distinct, and the context for the post. I'm sure he's been asked a few, hundred, times what's his take on this decision made by this single person.
> Two, I actually don't have any personal criticisms of Jarred. He has different taste than me, he wants different things out of life than me. [...] Honestly, I think he did well for himself, and I don't wish him any ill will.
> That said I'm happy that our business interests are no longer intertwined! As soon as the Internet stops arguing in public about whether the rewrite was good or bad for Bun based on the language choice, I believe that concludes our interactions.
Translation, Jarred posted his thing, so now Andrew "has" to post his thing: hopefully so the internet will stop asking, and he can ignore this shit he doesn't care about, and people will leave him alone long enough that he can get back to spending his attention on his language, which is all he really wants.
> I've worked with ark enough that I think I've started to learn his default style, or at the very least to know that from him; this isn't an attack. If that was your read, I think you're taking more from sources that aren't this post.
You start by taking more from sources that aren’t this post, then in the very next sentence accuse the other person of doing what you just admitted to.
This article has very clear attacks like calling him a “stinky manager” from literal gossip, or saying he wrote “slop” before LLMs.
If you can’t see these as personal attacks, you are taking more from other sources and your predetermined opinions than the article. That is what you admitted, but I don’t think you realize it.
Lmao when I can learn to master speaking like you;;
That said I have positive feelings about Zig as a project, but I do see it is a straight vitality show of a person rather than someone putting broader adoption in front. If Andrew K ever prioritized adoption he would have been a kind and dull leader keen on advertising here and there but he is not, he puts principles first, and people abide with him to see what he could bring to the world, not for being kind, so if people say they know Andrew K they are actually saying well he has that in his personality
> I wonder if you're confusing statements of fact, for attacks?
Hearsay and gossip from the "juicy grape vine" along with implying Jarred is too stupid to critically think about his own path in life because he didn't go to university are not exactly statements of fact. They're elitist and vindictive, but those are not synonymous with honest.
> If that was your read, I think you're taking more from sources that aren't this post.
I'd encourage you to reread the post and try to catch how weirdly spiteful and inconsistent it sounds in places:
> But having graduated from the Thiel Fellowship school of thought rather than university...
> Jarred was a stinky manager. Poor communication, unrealistic expectations, low empathy, no experience. Just a total shit show, from an employment perspective.
> Jarred was already writing slop well before he had access to LLMs.
> Now, it's not our business to police what our users do... We made futile attempts to guide them towards better programming practices.
Allow me to reframe what I'm trying to say. Depending on how much placation and linguistic sugar you required to tolerate reality; you might need to remember, or think of ark is an asshole, but then so am I. I'm going to speak bluntly and directly, if you shit out shitty code. I'm going to call your code shitty. I will use the word shit. If you're making decisions that follow a clear pattern, especially if I have a problem with that pattern, I'm gonna name it. Naming something by that pattern, might be seen as degrading, or insulting. That's still, not an attack.
It's an uncomfortable observation, wrapped up in an opinion you don't like. I'm sorry reality is uncomfortable for you (rhetorical you), but welcome to the club?
Let me try explaining it with an example: If I wanted to attack someone, I would directly call them, personally an idiot. Or some other clearly directed insult, at who they are as an individual. I wouldn't list, or trash their output, I wouldn't waste time stating I'm grateful for their time or donations.
No, hypothetically, if I wanted to attack someone I'd use the example of the no call no show to the meeting and say: wow Jarred and his team really are shitty people to no call no show on someone like that. I hate a lot of people, but even I wouldn't noshow on them. He sounds like a shitty human.
I wonder if there's something we can all learn about the subject, given everyone is so sure a recounting of facts followed by a conclusion saying literally
"I actually don't have any personal criticisms of Jarred. He has different taste than me, he wants different things out of life than me. But I think he's actually happy and successful exactly where he is. He figured out how to accomplish all the stuff in life that he wants. [...] Honestly, I think he did well for himself, and I don't wish him any ill will."
is so clearly a personal attack? Honestly, if that were me, that would hurt way worse than reading this attack.
I agree and I’m confused that some other commenters aren’t seeing it.
> The grapevine was large and healthy and full of juicy grapes, and all those grapes contained the juice of the same message: Jarred was a stinky manager.
> Jarred was already writing slop well before he had access to LLMs.
This isn’t about wanting “sanitized corpo-speak” or something, but I do expect leads of projects to behave like adults and not build arguments on ad-hominem attacks and rumors they supposedly heard.
Address the topic and put forth some arguments. I don’t care to hear your personal beef with someone aired publicly.
"An unprofessional embarrassment" is exactly how I feel about Bun.
I don't get mad at people for standing up for their morals, I get mad when they have none. AI is an a-moral tech, and Bun is using it in an a-moral way: for team Bun the ends justify any means.
I'm on team Zig!
Ok, then call out those aspects. Don’t call the lead a stinky manager who wrote shitty code.
Criticize the project and methodology, not the person.
Management style and code quality outputs are not criticisms of the person, they are judgements of the person's management skills and coding skills. Are we not allowed to do that? Or do we just need to use nicer language when doing it? I could agree with nicer language, but those were actually very relevant facts that were missing in the original blog post about the rewrite.
I would love to have an unprofessional embarrassment project like Bun on my portfolio.
Agree with you.
This behaviour by the commentariat here on HN seems more like a reflexive revulsion at the discovering of humans with ideals other than money on this globe.
This of course leads to strong internal conflict - it becomes harder to accept yourself not having any morals when confronted by someone pointing it out. Easily resolved by the ego by disparaging the boss of zed instead.
Andrew decided to attack the person rather than ideas and positions. It's not a reflexive revulsion, it's an appropriately sized reaction to a blog post in poor taste.
> not having any morals
You don't agree with someone so you claim they have no morals. I don't have words for how stupid this is that anyone can so casually dehumanize someone over something so trivial.