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I say this as someone who has been cautioning about Microsoft's ownership of GitHub for years now... but the Zig community has been high drama lately. I thought

I say this as someone who has been cautioning about Microsoft's ownership of GitHub for years now... but the Zig community has been high drama lately. I thought the Rust community had done themselves a disservice with their high tolerance of drama, but lately Zig seems to me to be more drama than even Rust. I was saddened to see how they ganged up to bully the author of the Zig book. The book author, as far as I could tell, seems like a possibly immature teenager. But to have a whole community gang up on you with pitch forks because they have a suspicion you might use AI... that was gross to watch. I was already turned off by the constant Zig spam approach to marketing. But now that we're getting pitchfork mobs and ranty anti-AI diatribes it just seems like a community sustaining itself on negative energy. I think they can possibly still turn it around but it might involve cleaning house or instituting better rules for contributors.

zero0529 10mo ago
I agree partially. I do think that it was weird to focus on the AI aspect so much. AI is going to pollute everything going forward whether you like it or not. And honestly who cares, either it is a good ressource for learning or it’s not. You have to decide that for yourself and not based on whether AI helped writing it. However I think some of the critique was because he stole the code for the interactive editor and claimed he made it himself, which of course you shouldn’t do.
- ants_everywhere 10mo ago
  You can correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the actual claim was that Zigbook had not complied with the MIT license's attribution clause for code someone believed was copied. MIT only requires attribution for copies of "substantial portions" of code, and the code copied was 22 lines. Does that count as substantial? I'm not sure because I'm not a lawyer, but this was really an issue about definitions in an attribution clause over less code than people regularly copy from stack overflow without a second thought. By the time this accusation was made, the Zigbook author was already under attack from the community which put them in a defensive posture. Now, just to be clear, I think the book author behaved poorly in response. But the internet is full of young software engineers who would behave poorly if they wrote a book for a community and the community turned around and vilified them for it. I try not to judge individuals by the way they behave on their worst days. But I do think something like a community has a behavior and culture of its own and that does need to be guided with intention.
  - ImPostingOnHN 10mo ago
    > You can correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the actual claim was that Zigbook had not complied with the MIT license's attribution clause for code someone believed was copied. MIT only requires attribution for copies of "substantial portions" of code, and the code copied was 22 lines. Without including proper credit, it is classic infringement. I wouldn't personally call copyright infringement "theft", though. Imagine for a moment, the generosity of the MIT license: 'you can pretty much do anything you want with this code, I gift it to the world, all you have to do is give proper credit'. And so you read that, and take and take and take, and can't even give credit. > Now, just to be clear, I think the book author behaved poorly in response Precisely: maybe it was just a mistake? So, the author politely and professionally asks, not for the infringer to stop using the author's code, but just to give proper credit. And hey, here's a PR, so doing the right thing just requires an approval! The infringer's response to the offer of help seemed to confirm that this was not a mistake, but rather someone acting in bad faith. IMO, people should learn early on in their life to say "I was wrong, I'm sorry, I'll make it right, it won't happen again". Say that when you're wrong, and the respect floods in. > By the time this accusation was made, the Zigbook author was already under attack This is not quite accurate, from my recollection of events (which could be mistaken!): the community didn't even know about it until after the author respectfully, directly contacted the infringer with an offer to help, and the infringer responded with hostility and what looked like a case of Oppositional Defiant Disorder.
- latexr 10mo ago
  > I do think that it was weird to focus on the AI aspect so much. AI is going to pollute everything going forward whether you like it or not. The bigger issue is that they claimed no AI was used. That’s an outright lie which makes you think if you should trust anything else about it. > And honestly who cares, either it is a good ressource for learning or it’s not. You have to decide that for yourself and not based on whether AI helped writing it. You have no way of knowing if something is a good resource for learning until you invest your time into it. If it turns out it’s not a good resource, your time was wasted. Worse, you may have learned wrong ideas you now have to unlearn. If something was generated with an LLM, you have zero idea which parts are wrong or right.
  - zero0529 10mo ago
    I agree with you. It is shitty behavior to say it is not AI written when it clearly is. But I also think we at this point should just assume that everything is partially written using AI. For your last point, I think this was also a problem before LLMs. It has of course become easier to fake some kind of ethos in your writing, but it is also becoming easier to spot AI slop when you know what to look after right?
    - grayhatter 10mo ago
      > I agree with you. It is shitty behavior to say it is not AI written when it clearly is. > But I also think we at this point should just assume that everything is partially written using AI. Using "but" here implies your 2nd line is a partial refutation to the first. No one would have been angry if he'd posted it without clearly lying. Using AI isn't what pissed anyone off, being directly lied to (presumably to get around the strict "made by humans" rules across all the various Zig communities). Then there was the abusive PR edits attacking someone that seems to have gotten him banned. And his history of typosquatting, both various crypto surfaces, and cursor, and the typosquatting account for zigglang. People are mad because the guy is a selfish asshole, not because he dared to use AI. Nothing I've written has been assisted by AI in any way, and I know a number of people who do and demand the same. I don't think it's a reasonable default assumption.
lvass 10mo ago
Disservice? Rust is taking over the world while they still have nothing to show basically (Servo, the project Rust was created for, is behind ladybird of all things). Every clueless developer and their dog thinks Rust is like super safe and great, with very little empirical evidence still after 19 years of the language's existence. Zig people want Zig to "win". They are appearing on Hacker News almost every day now, and for that purpose this kind of things matters more than the language's merits themselves. I believe the language has a good share of merits though, far more than Rust, but it's too early and not battle tested to get so much attention.
- JoshTriplett 10mo ago
  > very little empirical evidence Evidence is easy to turn up and cite: https://security.googleblog.com/2025/11/rust-in-android-move-fast-fix-things.html https://security.googleblog.com/2025/11/rust-in-android-move... https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/news/urgent-need-memory-safety-software-products https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/news/urgent-need-memory-saf... https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/msrc/blog/2019/07/a-proactive-approach-to-more-secure-code https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/msrc/blog/2019/07/a-proactiv... https://www.chromium.org/Home/chromium-security/memory-safety/ https://www.chromium.org/Home/chromium-security/memory-safet... https://hacks.mozilla.org/2019/02/rewriting-a-browser-component-in-rust/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/2019/02/rewriting-a-browser-compon...
  - lvass 10mo ago
    FWIW, all of those links compare Rust to languages created before 1980, and are all projects largely and unusually independent of the crates ecosystem and where dynamic linking does not matter. If you're going to use a modern language anyway, you should do due diligence and compare it with something like Swift as the ladybird team is doing right now, or even a research language like Koka. There is a huge lack of evidence for Rust vs other modern languages and we should investigate that before we lock ourselves into yet another language that eventually becomes widely believed to suck.
    - alternatex 10mo ago
knowitnone3 10mo ago
You're assuming they are a teenager but you don't know. They used code without attribution and when asked to do so, they edited the comment and mocked the requestor. And you're calling the zig community the bully? They lied about not using AI. This kind of dishonesty does not need to be tolerated.
latexr 10mo ago
> seems like a possibly immature teenager. What makes you say that? Couldn’t it be an immature adult? > because they have a suspicion you might use AI Was that the reason? From what I remember (which could definitely be incomplete information) the complaint was that they were clearly using AI while claiming no AI had been used, stole code from another project while claiming it was their own, refused to add credit when a PR for that was made, tried to claim a namespace on open-vsx… At a certain point, that starts to look outright malicious. It’s one thing to not know “the rules” but be willing to fix your mistakes when they are pointed out. It’s an entirely different thing to lie, obfuscate, and double down on bad attitude.
- radlad 10mo ago
  I just want to point out that even if you are correct, as a Zig outsider, none of this is obvious. The situation just looks bad.
  - latexr 10mo ago
    I’m a Zig outsider. I gathered the context from reading the conversation around it, most of it posted to HN. Which is why I also pointed out I may have incomplete information. If one looks past the immediate surface, which is a prerequisite to form an informed opinion, Zigbook is the one who clearly looks bad. The website is no longer up, even, now showing a DMCA notice.
  - LexiMax 10mo ago
    The way these sorts of things look to outsiders depends on the set of facts that are presented to those outsiders. Choosing to focus on the existence of drama and bullying without delving into the underlying reason why there was such a negative reaction in the first place is kind of part and parcel to that. At best it's the removal of context necessary to understand the dynamics at play, at worst it's a lie of omission.
    - deleted 10mo ago
      [deleted]
npn 10mo ago
> turned off by the constant Zig spam approach to marketing ? what? from my experience zig marketing is pretty mid. it is nowhere at the level of rust. heck, rust evangelism strikeforce made me hate rust and all the people promote it, even for now.
grayhatter 10mo ago
> I was saddened to see how they ganged up to bully the author of the Zig book. The book author, as far as I could tell, seems like a possibly immature teenager. But to have a whole community gang up on you with pitch forks because they have a suspicion you might use AI... that was gross to watch. Your assumption is woefully incorrect. People were annoyed, when the explicit and repeated lie that the AI generated site he released which was mostly written by AI, was claimed to be AI free. But annoyed isn't why he was met with the condemnation he received. In addition to the repeated lies, there's the long history of this account of typosquatting various groups, many, many crypto projects, the number of cursor/getcursor accounts, the license violation and copying code without credit from an existing community group (with a reputation for expending a lot of effort, just to help other zig users), the abusive and personal attack editing the PR asking, for nothing but crediting the source of the code he tried to steal. All the while asking for donations for the work he copied from others. All of that punctuated by the the fact he seems to have plans to typo squat Zig users given he controls the `zigglang` account on github. None of this can reasonable be considered just a simple mistake on a bad day. This is premeditated malicious behavior from someone looking to leach off the work of other people. People are mad because the guy is a selfish asshole, who has a clear history of coping from others, being directly abusive, and demonstrated intent to attempt to impersonate the core ziglang team/org... not because he dared to use AI.

zero0529 10mo ago

I agree partially. I do think that it was weird to focus on the AI aspect so much. AI is going to pollute everything going forward whether you like it or not. And honestly who cares, either it is a good ressource for learning or it’s not. You have to decide that for yourself and not based on whether AI helped writing it. However I think some of the critique was because he stole the code for the interactive editor and claimed he made it himself, which of course you shouldn’t do.

ants_everywhere 10mo ago
You can correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the actual claim was that Zigbook had not complied with the MIT license's attribution clause for code someone believed was copied. MIT only requires attribution for copies of "substantial portions" of code, and the code copied was 22 lines. Does that count as substantial? I'm not sure because I'm not a lawyer, but this was really an issue about definitions in an attribution clause over less code than people regularly copy from stack overflow without a second thought. By the time this accusation was made, the Zigbook author was already under attack from the community which put them in a defensive posture. Now, just to be clear, I think the book author behaved poorly in response. But the internet is full of young software engineers who would behave poorly if they wrote a book for a community and the community turned around and vilified them for it. I try not to judge individuals by the way they behave on their worst days. But I do think something like a community has a behavior and culture of its own and that does need to be guided with intention.
- ImPostingOnHN 10mo ago
  > You can correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the actual claim was that Zigbook had not complied with the MIT license's attribution clause for code someone believed was copied. MIT only requires attribution for copies of "substantial portions" of code, and the code copied was 22 lines. Without including proper credit, it is classic infringement. I wouldn't personally call copyright infringement "theft", though. Imagine for a moment, the generosity of the MIT license: 'you can pretty much do anything you want with this code, I gift it to the world, all you have to do is give proper credit'. And so you read that, and take and take and take, and can't even give credit. > Now, just to be clear, I think the book author behaved poorly in response Precisely: maybe it was just a mistake? So, the author politely and professionally asks, not for the infringer to stop using the author's code, but just to give proper credit. And hey, here's a PR, so doing the right thing just requires an approval! The infringer's response to the offer of help seemed to confirm that this was not a mistake, but rather someone acting in bad faith. IMO, people should learn early on in their life to say "I was wrong, I'm sorry, I'll make it right, it won't happen again". Say that when you're wrong, and the respect floods in. > By the time this accusation was made, the Zigbook author was already under attack This is not quite accurate, from my recollection of events (which could be mistaken!): the community didn't even know about it until after the author respectfully, directly contacted the infringer with an offer to help, and the infringer responded with hostility and what looked like a case of Oppositional Defiant Disorder.
latexr 10mo ago
> I do think that it was weird to focus on the AI aspect so much. AI is going to pollute everything going forward whether you like it or not. The bigger issue is that they claimed no AI was used. That’s an outright lie which makes you think if you should trust anything else about it. > And honestly who cares, either it is a good ressource for learning or it’s not. You have to decide that for yourself and not based on whether AI helped writing it. You have no way of knowing if something is a good resource for learning until you invest your time into it. If it turns out it’s not a good resource, your time was wasted. Worse, you may have learned wrong ideas you now have to unlearn. If something was generated with an LLM, you have zero idea which parts are wrong or right.
- zero0529 10mo ago
  I agree with you. It is shitty behavior to say it is not AI written when it clearly is. But I also think we at this point should just assume that everything is partially written using AI. For your last point, I think this was also a problem before LLMs. It has of course become easier to fake some kind of ethos in your writing, but it is also becoming easier to spot AI slop when you know what to look after right?
  - grayhatter 10mo ago
    > I agree with you. It is shitty behavior to say it is not AI written when it clearly is. > But I also think we at this point should just assume that everything is partially written using AI. Using "but" here implies your 2nd line is a partial refutation to the first. No one would have been angry if he'd posted it without clearly lying. Using AI isn't what pissed anyone off, being directly lied to (presumably to get around the strict "made by humans" rules across all the various Zig communities). Then there was the abusive PR edits attacking someone that seems to have gotten him banned. And his history of typosquatting, both various crypto surfaces, and cursor, and the typosquatting account for zigglang. People are mad because the guy is a selfish asshole, not because he dared to use AI. Nothing I've written has been assisted by AI in any way, and I know a number of people who do and demand the same. I don't think it's a reasonable default assumption.

lvass 10mo ago

Disservice? Rust is taking over the world while they still have nothing to show basically (Servo, the project Rust was created for, is behind ladybird of all things). Every clueless developer and their dog thinks Rust is like super safe and great, with very little empirical evidence still after 19 years of the language's existence. Zig people want Zig to "win". They are appearing on Hacker News almost every day now, and for that purpose this kind of things matters more than the language's merits themselves. I believe the language has a good share of merits though, far more than Rust, but it's too early and not battle tested to get so much attention.

JoshTriplett 10mo ago
> very little empirical evidence Evidence is easy to turn up and cite: https://security.googleblog.com/2025/11/rust-in-android-move-fast-fix-things.html https://security.googleblog.com/2025/11/rust-in-android-move... https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/news/urgent-need-memory-safety-software-products https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/news/urgent-need-memory-saf... https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/msrc/blog/2019/07/a-proactive-approach-to-more-secure-code https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/msrc/blog/2019/07/a-proactiv... https://www.chromium.org/Home/chromium-security/memory-safety/ https://www.chromium.org/Home/chromium-security/memory-safet... https://hacks.mozilla.org/2019/02/rewriting-a-browser-component-in-rust/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/2019/02/rewriting-a-browser-compon...
- lvass 10mo ago
  FWIW, all of those links compare Rust to languages created before 1980, and are all projects largely and unusually independent of the crates ecosystem and where dynamic linking does not matter. If you're going to use a modern language anyway, you should do due diligence and compare it with something like Swift as the ladybird team is doing right now, or even a research language like Koka. There is a huge lack of evidence for Rust vs other modern languages and we should investigate that before we lock ourselves into yet another language that eventually becomes widely believed to suck.
  - alternatex 10mo ago

knowitnone3 10mo ago

You're assuming they are a teenager but you don't know. They used code without attribution and when asked to do so, they edited the comment and mocked the requestor. And you're calling the zig community the bully? They lied about not using AI. This kind of dishonesty does not need to be tolerated.

latexr 10mo ago

> seems like a possibly immature teenager. What makes you say that? Couldn’t it be an immature adult? > because they have a suspicion you might use AI Was that the reason? From what I remember (which could definitely be incomplete information) the complaint was that they were clearly using AI while claiming no AI had been used, stole code from another project while claiming it was their own, refused to add credit when a PR for that was made, tried to claim a namespace on open-vsx… At a certain point, that starts to look outright malicious. It’s one thing to not know “the rules” but be willing to fix your mistakes when they are pointed out. It’s an entirely different thing to lie, obfuscate, and double down on bad attitude.

radlad 10mo ago
I just want to point out that even if you are correct, as a Zig outsider, none of this is obvious. The situation just looks bad.
- latexr 10mo ago
  I’m a Zig outsider. I gathered the context from reading the conversation around it, most of it posted to HN. Which is why I also pointed out I may have incomplete information. If one looks past the immediate surface, which is a prerequisite to form an informed opinion, Zigbook is the one who clearly looks bad. The website is no longer up, even, now showing a DMCA notice.
- LexiMax 10mo ago
  The way these sorts of things look to outsiders depends on the set of facts that are presented to those outsiders. Choosing to focus on the existence of drama and bullying without delving into the underlying reason why there was such a negative reaction in the first place is kind of part and parcel to that. At best it's the removal of context necessary to understand the dynamics at play, at worst it's a lie of omission.
  - deleted 10mo ago
    [deleted]

npn 10mo ago

> turned off by the constant Zig spam approach to marketing ? what? from my experience zig marketing is pretty mid. it is nowhere at the level of rust. heck, rust evangelism strikeforce made me hate rust and all the people promote it, even for now.

grayhatter 10mo ago

> I was saddened to see how they ganged up to bully the author of the Zig book. The book author, as far as I could tell, seems like a possibly immature teenager. But to have a whole community gang up on you with pitch forks because they have a suspicion you might use AI... that was gross to watch. Your assumption is woefully incorrect. People were annoyed, when the explicit and repeated lie that the AI generated site he released which was mostly written by AI, was claimed to be AI free. But annoyed isn't why he was met with the condemnation he received. In addition to the repeated lies, there's the long history of this account of typosquatting various groups, many, many crypto projects, the number of cursor/getcursor accounts, the license violation and copying code without credit from an existing community group (with a reputation for expending a lot of effort, just to help other zig users), the abusive and personal attack editing the PR asking, for nothing but crediting the source of the code he tried to steal. All the while asking for donations for the work he copied from others. All of that punctuated by the the fact he seems to have plans to typo squat Zig users given he controls the `zigglang` account on github. None of this can reasonable be considered just a simple mistake on a bad day. This is premeditated malicious behavior from someone looking to leach off the work of other people. People are mad because the guy is a selfish asshole, who has a clear history of coping from others, being directly abusive, and demonstrated intent to attempt to impersonate the core ziglang team/org... not because he dared to use AI.