(I’m not a member of the community, so not fully aware of the dynamics.)
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.
“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. “The LLM [verbs] with Zig” isn’t equivalent to “I [verb] with Zig using LLM”, and that difference matters.
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.
(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.)
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.
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.
> [...] 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.
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
* 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.
One does not need to "unequivocally agree", as facts should be verifiable. =3
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.
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.
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).
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 :)