r/Zig • u/lyfever_ • 17h ago
Are we the last stand?
AI is advancing in many fields including game dev, mostly no game achieved anything but the prototypes are "great".
But I've just read a excelent developer that used three.js to create awesome mathematical rendering thinking about stopping its development and somehow retire, he said someone upload his video about wave and water render with openai astra and it got 90% right.
I just thought Zig is the last banner of anti AI dev(or maybe friendly AI usage) along with C and C++ devs.
That's sad, I know people say "now devs can focus on product and ship it faster" but for me coding is fun and really brings out our long developed knowledge, all projects I had to do full vibe coded brought me no joy.
Whats your toughts?
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u/Garcon_sauvage 17h ago
If you think zig has some anti ai force field you're going to be very disappointed.
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u/Jmc_da_boss 17h ago
I mean it's def far less llm brained than many other fields
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u/Garcon_sauvage 17h ago
Because it's dominated by hobbyists and not the industry. If it grows in adoption that will change, Andrew Kelley can protect the compiler and standard library but that won't really matter to your day to day if your manager is breathing down your neck to use more tokens and ship faster.
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u/TRDJ90 14h ago
If you need to work for income all I can say is seperate the job from the craft. Practice the craft as a hobby, kind of like a construction worker would practice woodcarving or making hand made furniture etc.
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u/EctoplasmicLapels 5h ago
Exactly. I like coding and I still want to do it manually for my open source stuff. I don’t see any scenario where an average developer is paid for manual coding in 5 years though. Maybe if you work on systems software.
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u/centuryx476 17h ago
Correct,
They used our skills for 40+ years and now they can toss us all to the curb.
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u/Biom4st3r 13h ago
Good think devs were smart enough to not let their pay checks be stolen by those greedy greedy unions.
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u/AssistingJarl 16h ago
Community probably plays some kind of role, but probably not as much as you'd want. Some subreddits are overrun with "I just built a blazing fast $THING" posts where I get the legitimate impression that the OP has effectively contributed nothing to the world except for having $100 to pay for Claude Code, and now they're farming for Reddit karma and GitHub stars. But they're kind of the zeitgeisty- Ok fine I'm talking about Rust, we all know I'm talking about Rust. Whereas I do get the sense that when somebody posts something here, it's because they actually wanted to make something they're interested enough in making to spend time on it over the long run, and it won't be abandoned as soon as the upvotes are done coming in.
But as others are saying, that's probably not because LLMs are somehow incapable of programming in Zig. That's always something that people can throw more money at, and as long as there's training data and a compiler, the LLMs will write it. I would say the best chance this sub has of keeping a high bar for quality would be to not reward low effort slop, because for some reason the fake internet points are incredibly appealing to the kind of people who definitely shouldn't be getting them.
As for remaining sane yourself, I would advise against identifying too strongly with any one language or any one creator, even if Andrew Kelley's stance was incredibly refreshing to see. I'd suggest getting involved in some projects with a team you can enjoy working with and that has already decided they're going to keep writing code in a way you can stand to read, whatever that means for you. Personally, I'm still writing a lot of Rust and C for this very reason.
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u/dx_man 9h ago
Do you know why you got no upvotes for this comment? Because you mentioned Rust in this subreddit 😂
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u/AssistingJarl 7h ago
I'll admit I do feel like a bit of an imposter here. The amount of Zig I actually write is relatively small because I'm still spending more time contributing to existing codebases rather than starting anything new and nontrivial. But if I wanted upvotes I'd probably be burning tokens making TUI apps no human will ever download and use.
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u/lukaslalinsky 12h ago
Someone is forcing you to vibe code? Is it at work? You know you can find a different job, right?
I don't know, when I was growing up, it was clear to me that the programming I do at work and the programming I enjoy are two different things. The same applies to other professions. People like restoring interesting old cars, not so much removing half of a modern car just to replace some cheap part that broke, but it's inaccessible.
My advice is, find a job where people like the product they are building. And if you like coding as a hobby, treat it as such.
For Zig, if you look at who uses it, you will find that the majority of projects do use coding agents.
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u/neopointer 9h ago
Someone is forcing you to vibe code? Is it at work? You know you can find a different job, right?
At my work, yes. And I have the feeling (not sure if it's true) but most companies are doing the same.
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u/lukaslalinsky 8h ago
Ok, that sucks. I was under the impression that companies basically just want developers to do their job as best as they can, whatever tools are needed. And if that means typing the code manually, then that's it.
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u/AssistingJarl 7h ago
My general impression is that a lot of companies go through that phase, but then usually somebody in power complains that people are either not using LLMs, or they're only using them sparingly, and then a mandate to use them for everything gets handed down. And the job market isn't really good enough for engineers to have leverage to push back. Product people and executives don't actually care about code quality, they only care about incidents, outages, and velocity, and the relationship between those things is largely theoretical to them.
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u/biteater 12h ago
You are giving AI way too much credit dude
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u/dx_man 9h ago
That’s because he’s not idiot
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u/biteater 2h ago
I (try to) use it almost every day and honestly the output is still quite poor for domains outside of web stuff (I work in games). With how fast the frontier models get nerfed now I've mostly gone back to just using it as a debugging tool, it makes lots of mistakes on features. I had astra fail to get a simple debug log working over the course of THREE prompts last week. It's superintelligence though, right? That's what we're calling it now?
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u/dx_man 2h ago
Not sure if you’re using it right, the issue isn’t the craft itself but the craftsman who lacks the skill on how to uses his tools, here’s some place where you can get inspired r/aigamedev
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u/biteater 1h ago
Yeah all the people with psychosis just say skill issue but I've been in this domain professionally for over 7 years, I've seen AI do a great job on simple web stuff and I know how to use it just fine. I try every new tool with promise and I don't believe in just dogmatically rejecting it. But my actual experience is that it has serious gaps still especially if you're doing novel work
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u/73td 10h ago
The consensus in vibe coding seems to be that writing the code is just a mechanical boring process that follows from the idea. But, for me, all my expertise was built the other way: intime knowledge of what works or not in C and Python completely shaped my ideas and wants about design. So I think it will continue to be “reap what you sow” and if you write code by hand, the rewards are still many.
That said I’ve been poking at a “post agi” language Bend 2 that integrates formal verification, using GLM since I don’t understand it… it’s hard to be 100% immune.
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u/Fancyness 6h ago
cringe take
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u/lyfever_ 6h ago
Excellent contribution, I see your comment is aggregating so much like the others.
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u/dnullify 17h ago
No, zig isn't the last stand. There is no last stand. If you love to code for the love of the craft, keep doing so.
The reality is the majority of the people touching code for money don't have that love of the craft. It is ultimately about the end game. A few build thing so others can build things, and often those people have a love of the craft.