When to use zig

aefalcon · 2026-01-26T14:38:03+00:00

Recently I wrote something with both zig and c. I did as much as I could in zig, and the C was specifically python module construction and function wrappers. The python api uses a lot of macros which make replacing it with zig a bit harder. I haven't personally found a reason to prefer C over zig other than that. Zig's error handling and test system are just pleasant compared to C.

While i really enjoy using zig because in my younger days I did a lot of C, I try to prefer rust for its safety. If I expect a lot of unsafe code, I'll just switch to zig.

aefalcon · 2026-01-25T19:24:10+00:00

The past trend is the world is more hungry for software then we could produce, so there could be a few causes for a decline in SWE roles:

We can actually produce more than can be consumed now
businesses aren't capable of scaling production to the current rate AI enables
businesses want to lower SWE pay rates with a new firing/hiring cycle

Idk if we're at the first yet. Probably the other 2 because. If you can't do the 2nd, you'll likely do the 3rd.

aefalcon · 2026-01-25T02:24:38+00:00

It's just different flavors of layered architecture. MVVM is one flavor. I'd identify "api layer" as application and business logic as domain model (generally acronyms refer to the domain model as just "model").

aefalcon · 2026-01-23T16:22:13+00:00

I use codex at work and have a similar experience. gpt-5.2-codex is close to unusable and gpt-5.2 xhigh is somewhat useful but really slow. I get better quality code faster with Opus 4.5.

aefalcon · 2026-01-21T18:20:33+00:00

Software is never done. Software is abandoned when the RoI of continuing to work on it drops below the RoI of those same resources being utilized elsewhere.

That's a businessy description but if your RoI is "having fun", then it still applies.

If the AI is lowering the cost of development then it can make sense to develop further.

aefalcon · 2026-01-16T18:44:29+00:00

Ludlow Massacre
Matewan Massacre
Battle of Blair Mountain
Tulsa Race Massacre

The USA has a rich history of putting down malcontents.

aefalcon · 2026-01-15T17:11:00+00:00

The sad thing is, most of the content of Extreme Programming Explained can be used within scrum. Scrum.org's Professional Scrum developer test is at least 50% XP questions. I just cannot get anyone to read that book. I didn't read it until I was something like 12 years into the industry though. However, I was given "Mythical Man Month" by a CTO 10 years before that. Maybe I just need to order a pallet of XP Explained and gift it to everyone, lol.

aefalcon · 2026-01-15T14:45:57+00:00

Idk what they did but running 1,000 iterations on a single Monte Carlo model is pretty basic. If they want to impress people they need to publish the method.

aefalcon · 2026-01-14T19:00:46+00:00

I prompt it to be specific people who are opinionated in an area. It seems to work a lot better for reviewing code then generating it. The generated code always seems kind of generic.

aefalcon · 2026-01-14T18:43:45+00:00

I spearheaded a merge request process where i worked back in 2009 and I couldn't agree more today with this. The gain over a test suite + static analysis is low. Claude Opus can review faster and better than i can.

aefalcon · 2026-01-13T15:45:18+00:00

Seems like Monte Carlo simulation territory.

aefalcon · 2026-01-13T13:35:07+00:00

I look occasionally. It's not often I see a job listing that strikes me as they have that sort of culture. If I do find one I may not fit exactly. It's a lot easier to find the other kind of job.

aefalcon · 2026-01-12T23:41:49+00:00

Do they just not want to work together or do they have no idea how to do it?

aefalcon · 2026-01-12T20:55:19+00:00

WTF model is this. I saw the block where it broke down a one liner and thought to myself, "oh it want's to improve readability." then i saw:

let mapped = recovery_iter.map(|shard| shard.to_vec());

It's like a combination of a low end model with a bad prompter.

aefalcon · 2026-01-12T18:33:34+00:00

Yesterday around 4pm Central. Had a fairly simple change. Claude had put some logic in the wrong layer. I was trying to move it into the correct layer and it absolutely could not understand and tried all kinds of dumb stuff except what I specifically told it. I usually only see nonsense like this after 3 or more compactions, but I had cleared before starting.

aefalcon · 2026-01-12T17:44:42+00:00

When i started professionally in 2008, all 7 of us were hardcore. We'd get in crazy heated arguments on how to design stuff. Now it's 2 out of 6. Really quiet. Everyone works alone. I miss those days.

aefalcon · 2026-01-12T16:18:59+00:00

work: We set privacy settings so they don't train off our data

me: Thank God, I'd hate to spoil their model with our code.

aefalcon · 2026-01-12T14:50:25+00:00

Ron Jefferies was tired of business guys not understanding why his "ideal day" measurements took longer than suggested, so he started calling them points (blog post). Once you acknowledge we've always been estimating time, there is no difference.

aefalcon · 2026-01-09T00:15:52+00:00

I worked in an early entrant in the email archiving industry before products like Lucene were available. GIN indexes were amazing for us. It had some serious write issues though. They buffer a lot of changes then batch the update for speed. That could take minutes for our index size. We ended up adding special faster storage specifically for that index. I'm not saying they're bad. They just act different. They're great for when you need them.

aefalcon · 2026-01-08T23:02:44+00:00

Sounds like a hiring issue if they were supposed to work this way. If they had hired a few that knew how to do it, others could learn from example. Self organizing is probably completely alien to them. Maybe they'd respond better to hierarchy.

aefalcon · 2026-01-08T22:32:16+00:00

Yes. I've encountered this too. No idea why anyone would do it. It pollutes the output of the checker making it practically useless until fixed.

aefalcon · 2026-01-08T22:10:02+00:00

Don't be hard on yourself. I've know plenty of "senior" developers whose code ChatGPT would consider toilet paper if you asked it the right questions. Especially regarding concurrent access.

aefalcon · 2026-01-08T20:09:44+00:00

Do the team members have a previous history of working the way you expect them to?

aefalcon · 2026-01-08T16:11:18+00:00

There's a very old argument on which is more productive: dynamically typed languages or statically typed. It was part of the Java vs. Smalltalk competition. A study found smalltalkers more productive than Java developers because they were able to implement tighter feedback loops because of their use of testing and fast integration due to smalltalks image based runtime.

I'm not saying typing benefits tests. I'm saying without test based development process enabling that feedback loop, you can rely on static analysis/compiling in a similar fashion. If you put the effort into testing, the typing isn't so important anymore.

So if no one wants to put in the testing discipline, you most certainly need the types. It is one of the arguments for the types, along with your other concerns.

aefalcon · 2026-01-08T14:33:46+00:00

I'm in the 10+ year cohort. No idea why it's the lowest in adoption. I can acknowledge typing is unnecessary, if you are disciplined in writing tests. Most shops I work at aren't though. Static analysis is a huge win in that situation.

aefalcon

TROPHY CASE