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> 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

> 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

krautsauer 2mo ago
> I actually don't have any personal criticisms of Jarred. was the cherry on top.
- dpatterbee 2mo ago
  Those are not personal criticisms, those are all professional criticisms. There are many people who don't seem to know the different between work and life and so they may conflate the two, but to me it's pretty obvious.
  - deleted 2mo ago
    [deleted]
  - dwattttt 2mo ago
    "a stinky manager ... Just a total shit show" are examples I would reach for to demonstrate someone is not being professional.
    - dpatterbee 2mo ago
      I don't know why choice of language is having such sway in determining what you view as professional. Maybe it's just a cultural difference but where I'm from people just use the words they need to to communicate what they're trying to say. If something's a shit show I'd prefer someone just said it rather than dancing around it with corpo-speak.
      - dwattttt 2mo ago
        > I don't know why choice of language is having such sway in determining what you view as professional This is a blog post: it's purely textual, language is the only thing it uses to convey meaning. The words chosen to do so reflect what the author thinks. > where I'm from people just use the words they need to to communicate what they're trying to say Yes. What ark is trying to say, via the words he chose, is what's earning him the description of "unprofessional". He could say every factual thing in the blog post without being unprofessional, he just chose not to.
        dpatterbee 2mo ago
        I think you're, intentionally or not, misinterpreting my comment. Language is used to convey meaning, and Andrew wrote words that presumably meant what he meant them to mean. However, in many comments on here people are not commenting on "what he meant them to mean" and instead focusing on which words he chose to convey that meaning. I'm sure Andrew could've switched out every word in the post and still conveyed the same meaning, and perhaps offended the peanut gallery's sensibilities a little less, but why should he? In the example I was originally replying to, suppose Andrew had instead said "Jarred showed poorer than desired management abilities" and "Employees disliked working at Oven". Approximately the same message is communicated, a little watered-down maybe, but who's gaining from this tone-policing? Certainly not us, the readers. And I don't see how this affects how "professional" this is, unless "professional" is just performative nonsense and nothing to do with the substance of the text?
        dwattttt 2mo ago
        > And I don't see how this affects how "professional" this is, unless "professional" is just performative nonsense and nothing to do with the substance of the text? It changes my opinion of whether I trust ark to actually be right, or whether he has (and will continue to) let his emotions get in the way. The particular quote I noted was > We probably tried to tell you to try enabling it and you didn't listen. We have good advice, damn it! He wanted to say this, more than he wanted to know if he was right. It reduces my trust in his judgement.
  - dataflow 2mo ago
    > There are many people who don't seem to know the different between work and life and so they may conflate the two, but to me it's pretty obvious. Nobody is conflating anything, you're just misinterpreting the same words with different meanings. A professional criticism can, in fact, be unprofessional, and even a personal attack. These are not mutually exclusive. > Those are not personal criticisms You're using "personal" to mean "regarding non-professional matters", whereas others are using "personal" to mean "regarding the individual person themselves". > those are all professional criticisms You're using "professional" to mean "regarding the profession" whereas others are using to mean... you know, the opposite of "unprofessional".
    - dpatterbee 2mo ago
      Yes, professional has two meanings in use here. Professional as in relating to one's profession, and professional as in how one may be expected to behave when carrying out one's profession. In my comment I was using the former. I'm not really sure what you're on about me "misinterpreting" something. The author of the article claimed to not have personal criticisms, and I was pointing out that there's a standard interpretation of those words that is true.
    - bananaquant 2mo ago
      > others are using "personal" to mean "regarding the individual person themselves" Following your logic, we cannot critique anyone in particular ever. How absurd! > You're using "professional" to mean "regarding the profession" whereas others are using to mean... you know, the opposite of "unprofessional". At the end of the day, it is the same thing. Person does what is their job according to common standards. Andrew runs a software foundation, and it is his job to make sure that behavior of one of related projects does not disrupt the stream of all donations or bury his project under a pile of slop submissions. Highlighting the technical dysfunctions of the other project is an effective way to show the differences between the two. Do you have a suggestion that would be just as effective, while being more "professional"?
      - dminik 2mo ago
        Oh, you can actually. But you have to bring receipts, otherwise it very well could be libel.
  - threatofrain 2mo ago
    That's true, claims of professional dishonesty is a kind of professional criticism. Shall we begin discussing whether Jarred is the kind of person who makes up fake conversations about Andrew? As fellow professionals in this field, shall we engage in this very professional debate about Jarred's honesty as a moral human being?
ZeroGravitas 2mo ago
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.
- asa400 2mo ago
  > 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. All of what you say may be true, but the point remains: the Bun project lead can do whatever the hell he wants with his own project. There is no objectively "right" path here, in a moral sense. People are allowed to rewrite their own software whenever they want to for whatever reasons they want, people are allowed to be "stinky managers" (Andrew's words), people are allowed to only hire people who want to work 7 days a week, people are allowed to only work on things that interest them, people are allowed to write crappy, hacky code in their project. What business is it of Zig's that Jarred is (apparently, secondhand) a "stinky manager"? What business is it of Zig's that Jarred wants to run his own company the way he wants to? Going after the guy's character after he decided he wanted to go a different direction is _incredibly_ petty. It's so easy to deal with this like a professional: "Zig and Bun are no longer affiliated. I thank Jarred for his contributions to Zig over the years and wish him and the Bun project the best." or some variant of that. Bland and corporate, but who cares? It's done. Move on. Save the grousing for the DMs, keep on attracting new contributors, avoid alienating bystanders/potential contributors, build your project. This post does nothing to burnish the reputation of the Zig project or its leadership, and in fact has the opposite effect. The message from the top is apparently "it's fine to be petty and vindictive".
voidhorse 2mo ago
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.

krautsauer 2mo ago

> I actually don't have any personal criticisms of Jarred. was the cherry on top.

dpatterbee 2mo ago
Those are not personal criticisms, those are all professional criticisms. There are many people who don't seem to know the different between work and life and so they may conflate the two, but to me it's pretty obvious.
- deleted 2mo ago
  [deleted]
- dwattttt 2mo ago
  "a stinky manager ... Just a total shit show" are examples I would reach for to demonstrate someone is not being professional.
  - dpatterbee 2mo ago
    I don't know why choice of language is having such sway in determining what you view as professional. Maybe it's just a cultural difference but where I'm from people just use the words they need to to communicate what they're trying to say. If something's a shit show I'd prefer someone just said it rather than dancing around it with corpo-speak.
    - dwattttt 2mo ago
      > I don't know why choice of language is having such sway in determining what you view as professional This is a blog post: it's purely textual, language is the only thing it uses to convey meaning. The words chosen to do so reflect what the author thinks. > where I'm from people just use the words they need to to communicate what they're trying to say Yes. What ark is trying to say, via the words he chose, is what's earning him the description of "unprofessional". He could say every factual thing in the blog post without being unprofessional, he just chose not to.
      - dpatterbee 2mo ago
        I think you're, intentionally or not, misinterpreting my comment. Language is used to convey meaning, and Andrew wrote words that presumably meant what he meant them to mean. However, in many comments on here people are not commenting on "what he meant them to mean" and instead focusing on which words he chose to convey that meaning. I'm sure Andrew could've switched out every word in the post and still conveyed the same meaning, and perhaps offended the peanut gallery's sensibilities a little less, but why should he? In the example I was originally replying to, suppose Andrew had instead said "Jarred showed poorer than desired management abilities" and "Employees disliked working at Oven". Approximately the same message is communicated, a little watered-down maybe, but who's gaining from this tone-policing? Certainly not us, the readers. And I don't see how this affects how "professional" this is, unless "professional" is just performative nonsense and nothing to do with the substance of the text?
        dwattttt 2mo ago
        > And I don't see how this affects how "professional" this is, unless "professional" is just performative nonsense and nothing to do with the substance of the text? It changes my opinion of whether I trust ark to actually be right, or whether he has (and will continue to) let his emotions get in the way. The particular quote I noted was > We probably tried to tell you to try enabling it and you didn't listen. We have good advice, damn it! He wanted to say this, more than he wanted to know if he was right. It reduces my trust in his judgement.
- dataflow 2mo ago
  > There are many people who don't seem to know the different between work and life and so they may conflate the two, but to me it's pretty obvious. Nobody is conflating anything, you're just misinterpreting the same words with different meanings. A professional criticism can, in fact, be unprofessional, and even a personal attack. These are not mutually exclusive. > Those are not personal criticisms You're using "personal" to mean "regarding non-professional matters", whereas others are using "personal" to mean "regarding the individual person themselves". > those are all professional criticisms You're using "professional" to mean "regarding the profession" whereas others are using to mean... you know, the opposite of "unprofessional".
  - dpatterbee 2mo ago
    Yes, professional has two meanings in use here. Professional as in relating to one's profession, and professional as in how one may be expected to behave when carrying out one's profession. In my comment I was using the former. I'm not really sure what you're on about me "misinterpreting" something. The author of the article claimed to not have personal criticisms, and I was pointing out that there's a standard interpretation of those words that is true.
  - bananaquant 2mo ago
    > others are using "personal" to mean "regarding the individual person themselves" Following your logic, we cannot critique anyone in particular ever. How absurd! > You're using "professional" to mean "regarding the profession" whereas others are using to mean... you know, the opposite of "unprofessional". At the end of the day, it is the same thing. Person does what is their job according to common standards. Andrew runs a software foundation, and it is his job to make sure that behavior of one of related projects does not disrupt the stream of all donations or bury his project under a pile of slop submissions. Highlighting the technical dysfunctions of the other project is an effective way to show the differences between the two. Do you have a suggestion that would be just as effective, while being more "professional"?
    - dminik 2mo ago
      Oh, you can actually. But you have to bring receipts, otherwise it very well could be libel.
- threatofrain 2mo ago
  That's true, claims of professional dishonesty is a kind of professional criticism. Shall we begin discussing whether Jarred is the kind of person who makes up fake conversations about Andrew? As fellow professionals in this field, shall we engage in this very professional debate about Jarred's honesty as a moral human being?

ZeroGravitas 2mo ago

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.

asa400 2mo ago
> 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. All of what you say may be true, but the point remains: the Bun project lead can do whatever the hell he wants with his own project. There is no objectively "right" path here, in a moral sense. People are allowed to rewrite their own software whenever they want to for whatever reasons they want, people are allowed to be "stinky managers" (Andrew's words), people are allowed to only hire people who want to work 7 days a week, people are allowed to only work on things that interest them, people are allowed to write crappy, hacky code in their project. What business is it of Zig's that Jarred is (apparently, secondhand) a "stinky manager"? What business is it of Zig's that Jarred wants to run his own company the way he wants to? Going after the guy's character after he decided he wanted to go a different direction is _incredibly_ petty. It's so easy to deal with this like a professional: "Zig and Bun are no longer affiliated. I thank Jarred for his contributions to Zig over the years and wish him and the Bun project the best." or some variant of that. Bland and corporate, but who cares? It's done. Move on. Save the grousing for the DMs, keep on attracting new contributors, avoid alienating bystanders/potential contributors, build your project. This post does nothing to burnish the reputation of the Zig project or its leadership, and in fact has the opposite effect. The message from the top is apparently "it's fine to be petty and vindictive".

voidhorse 2mo ago

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.