About LLMs at Zig Days(kristoff.it) |
About LLMs at Zig Days(kristoff.it) |
(I’m not a member of the community, so not fully aware of the dynamics.)
His point is not coming from a place of LLM demonization. He very much acknowledges their usefulness, especially in a business context, e.g. for implementing yet another standard CRUD application and for shipping all the other "average" (in quality) business features quickly.
His point is a different one entirely: Say Andrew Kelley is attending the Zig Day. Why would you ask an LLM about a Zig programming problem you're struggling with instead of learning from the man himself? There's simply no LLM as knowledgeable about Zig as Andrew and the other people working on it or with it on the daily.
In other words: Zig Days are an opportunity for people to learn from each other and to spend time together (= the "Community" in "VP of Community"), and LLM are diminishing this opportunity.
Besides, Zig itself is mainly a language for people who care not just that a problem is solved but also about how it's being solved. ("Create software you can love.") While LLMs don't prevent anyone from doing so, they make it much more appealing to just vibe-code everything and not look too closely at the implementation.
No one needs to proclaim the utility of The Car before criticizing car culture.
This piece already says that all the clanker maximalism may be correct. shrugs Then it says that this get-together is for people who like programming. Even if the whirlwind of progress comes and takes their profession. Because then it could still be a hobby.
And this is too negative-against-AI for some people in this thread? Programming as a hobby? Okay, fine. Maybe we will have sold off all our RAM in a years time and the Government will have outlawed unassisted programming as too dangerous. The piece is too optimistic.
With things happening in general, and with Bun's LLM-aided move away from Zig in particular, there is bound to be some interest in talking about LLMs and how that impacts Zig's future.
I think this was a well measured "hey, let's focus on thing we are coming together to celebrate and advance: Zig".
Not necessarily. The take is reasonable but I'm curious about who could be bold enough to actually talk about or disclose their use of LLMs during these events.
Organizers are allowed to ban the mention of certain programming topics? I could understand if it was a topic that was adjacent to violence/harassment/sensitive stuff, but come on... are anti-AI groups becoming a cult?
Point being: just because a thing technically fits the genre does not mean it is something that the audience wants to listen to.
"[...] unless you feel very strongly about it."
i.e. complete ban is okay if the organizer feels very strongly about it.
Edit: I noticed later it was in Milan, I guess it makes perfect sense.
Not only these are generally reasonable things for a human to want to talk about, but what is happening in the tech industry is definitely on topic for an event like Zig Days.
The problem is when this consumes nearly 100% of the communication bandwidth detracting from the main goals of the event (applying systems thinking & making software you can love).
> [...] the best career move is to become proficient at buying more tokens orchestrating agents, but I would still recommend not putting all your eggs in one basket just yet because maybe – just maybe – there will still be some value in knowing how systems work, both to differentiate yourself from other developers career-wise, and as part of effective LLM steering.
* Excitement from people who are able to make things they could not,
* Fear from people who's livelihoods are threatened,
* Betrayal from artists whose work is being ripped off,
* Alarm from activists looking out for ecosystems & the climate.
To add to an already-difficult challenge: many people, corporations, & governments are pushing extreme greed, hubris, & dehumanization for various reasons.
This piece does an excellent job laying out its recommendations with sensitivity for people of different perspectives & positions. I very much appreciate that.
" * Excitement from people who are able to [unaccountably plagerize] things they could not,
* Fear from people who's [business IP rights] are threatened,
* [overt copyright theft from] artists [and chat bot users] whose work is being ripped off,
* [well funded denigration of] activists looking out for ecosystems & the climate. "
Thankfully LLM are not real "AI", and modern hapless 'slavery with extra steps' plans will eventually end badly. Popcorn and bubble infrastructure liquidation fund standing by... =3
All that said, I personally unequivocally agree with each of your points. I hope you are channeling this rage not only into comments sections but also into the hard work of tearing down & replacing the many incumbent systems that plagerize, denigrate, steal, oppress, monopolize, waste, & enslave. I certainly am.
Using your first example, if it was true and universally accepted that this was plaigerism--we wouldn't use it, now would we? But that's not the universal opinion so instead you're just twisting someone else's comment to stir the pot.
Again, if you don't personally like LLMs and you personally feel like it's plagiarism cool, don't use them. Or at least make an argument for it.
But as it stands, this comment is just low-effort trolling.
the thesis is that investing in your skills outside of LLMs pays dividends whether you decide to apply those skills to LLMs or not, plus spending time bonding with your fellow engineers is good for you too. so I'm sure Zig will be doing great in a few years
That seems like a strawman to as I can't think of anyone making a reasonable argument against. After all we still have C and even Assembly developers out there, despite the many languages-that're-more-convenient that've sprouted since.
> And even if you have full confidence that the future of commercial software is strictly hands-off agentic coding, Zig Days are still for people who enjoy the act of programming, even if that were to become just a hobby.
Maybe they’ll even get to enjoy their hobbies for a few days without worrying about getting left in the dust (perfectly fine).
Say that the IDE also "redefined what it meant to create software" when it entered the ecosystem as an idea and product, does that mean every conversation, community meetup and thinking needs to consider the IDEs now? Probably not, then there is no more room for the other topics anymore.
“I want to [verb] with Zig someday and want to show up and listen and learn”
“I [verb] with Zig and have formed opinions and want to swap them with others”
“I [verb] with Zig and have not yet formed opinions”
If you can’t identify a verb for such a sentence, then you probably need to gain some vague clarity on why you’re considering attending.
But if your sentences are all “I [verb] with LLM”, then there’s no point in attending a Zig meetup; attend an LLM meetup instead. “I [verb] with LLM and the LLM [verbs] with Zig” isn’t transitive to “I [verb] with Zig using LLM” in human social relations; that difference matters, even though a logical evaluation would claim that ( A & B ) & ( B & C ) = A & C. People are extremely sensitive to the difference and Zig has labeled their events as A & B, not A & C.
Specific example: “I code with LLM […] in Zig” would be offtopic, because there’s no human verb-use of Zig present; the verb “code” is bound to LLM, not to Zig, and so is not a valid basis for human connection over a shared interest in Zig.
Specific example: “I write out Zig programs on paper first” would be ontopic, but “I write Zig with pencils rather than pens” would be offtopic; even though both refer to the same activity, one is about how you perform a creative act within your self to output Zig, the other is best reserved for a stationery BOF.
(This holds true for all “I [verb] with [noun]” BOFs and is a good general principle for when to, and when not to, bring up LLMs at a Noun event. You can swap also “LLMs” for “employees” and get the same outcome: don’t go to a Noun BOF to talk about managing Noun workers; instead, go to a Managers BOF to talk about Verbing.)
It redefines it because its shoved down our throats as redefining it.
You could be right but I can think of numerous frustrating code jams in my past when we burned a lot of precious face-to-face time on fussy setup or other fiddly stuff.
Agreed, LLMs are particularly good at this kind of task.
For example: my windowing system on Linux would intermittently freeze. Diagnosing it was a pain--so I bounced the logs off the LLM. It gave me a couple of hypotheses and the commands to enable the correct logs for when it happened again. After the third time it happened, it pinpointed that a particular USB hub was causing the issue. I removed the devices downstream from that hub and haven't had an issue since.
You would never say "events are for humans, not search engines" as if search engines were a similar category to humans.
zig is a cool language, and worth learning about. =3
(I know nothing about Zig, but I wanted to directly appreciate your accuracy of word usage regardless :)
One does not need to "unequivocally agree", as facts should be verifiable. =3
https://www.briandorey.com/post/pi-pico-lora-remote-soil-mon...
If one is leading a Python (or a Zig!) meetup and has an aversive reaction to tomatoes, and said meetup has been all up about gardening for the past three events, it’s very plausible to imagine them soft-banning people from bringing tomato plants to show and tell. Sure, they’ll be teased mercilessly about it at first, and some jerk might troll them about it and get the boot, but ultimately it’s just an outlier human foible that will be accommodated with mostly grace and humor. And then there will almost certainly also, immediately, form a Tomato Cabal who goes out of their way to farm tomatoes with Python/Zig while specifically keeping it a wink-nod secret that they’re doing so, and someday the organizer will discover this and laugh in spite of their disgust and give the cabal an honorary Tomato Day event where the cabal leads that day’s proceedings and the usual leader stays home and watches desert movies and eats chips and salsa with secret, vicious glee and never tells another living soul.
Healthy human BOFs are the best form of social ever :D
People need to be reminded of reality in their newspeak bubble.
I simply narrowed the logical specificity of why LLM may be avoided in some use cases. No one can 100% prevent theft, as some people will decide personal desperation excuses philosophical compromises. It differs from a sociopath anti-social behavior, which is a constant aspect of civilizations. People can choose to be upset, or recognize it is a facet of some in "AI" gilded blitzscaling.
LLM are good at context search, and have other tangible use-cases that does not require constantly stealing from other people.
Have a wonderful day, =3
I invited you to attempt to present an argument, which you have neatly side-stepped.