Open-source Zig book

https://www.zigbook.net

208•rudedogg•2h ago

Comments

jasonjmcghee•2h ago

So despite this...

> The Zigbook intentionally contains no AI-generated content—it is hand-written, carefully curated, and continuously updated to reflect the latest language features and best practices.

I just don't buy it. I'm 99% sure this is written by an LLM.

Can the author... Convince me otherwise?

> This journey begins with simplicity—the kind you encounter on the first day. By the end, you will discover a different kind of simplicity: the kind you earn by climbing through complexity and emerging with complete understanding on the other side.

> Welcome to the Zigbook. Your transformation starts now.

...

> You will know where every byte lives in memory, when the compiler executes your code, and what machine instructions your abstractions compile to. No hidden allocations. No mystery overhead. No surprises.

...

> This is not about memorizing syntax. This is about earning mastery.

PaulRobinson•2h ago

You can't just say that a linguistic style "proves" or even "suggests" AI. Remember, AI is just spitting out things its seen before elsewhere. There's plenty of other texts I've seen with this sort of writing style, written long before AI was around.

Can I also ask: so what if it is or it isn't?

While AI slop is infuriating, and the bubble hype is maddening, I'm not sure every time somebody sees some content they don't like the style of we just call out it "must" be AI, and debate if it is or it isn't is not at least as maddening. It feels like all content published now gets debated like this, and I'm definitely not enjoying it.

maxbond•1h ago

You can be skeptical of anything but I think it's silly to say that these "Not just A, but B" constructions don't strongly suggest that it's generated text.

As to why it matters, doesn't it matter when people lie? Aren't you worried about the veracity of the text if it's not only generated but was presented otherwise? That wouldn't erode your trust that the author reviewed the text and corrected any hallucinations even by an iota?

geysersam•28m ago

> but I think it's silly to say that these "Not just A, but B" constructions don't strongly suggest ai generated text

Why? Didn't people use such constructions frequently before AI? Some authors probably overused them the same frequency AI does.

maxbond•11m ago

I don't think there was very much abuse of "not just A, but B" before ChatGPT. I think that's more of a product of RLHF than the initial training. Very few people wrote with the incredibly overwrought and flowery style of AI, and the English speaking Internet where most of the (English language) training data was sourced from is largely casual, everyday language. I imagine other language communities on the Internet are similar but I wouldn't know.

Regardless, some people born in England can speak French with a French accent. If someone speaks French to you with a French accent, where are you going to guess they were born?

Rochus•2h ago

Who cares?

Still better than just nagging.

maxbond•1h ago

Using AI to write is one thing, claiming you didn't when you did should be objectionable to everyone.

Rochus•1h ago

Who wants to be so petty.

maxbond•1h ago

So petty as to lie about using AI or so petty as to call it out? Calling it out doesn't seem petty to me.

I intend to learn Zig when it reaches 1.0 so I was interested in this book. Now that I see it was probably generated by someone who claimed otherwise, I suspect this book would have as much of a chance of hurting my understanding as helping it. So I'll skip it. Does that really sound petty?

littlestymaar•1h ago

This.

I wouldn't mind a technical person transparently using AI for doing the writing which isn't necessary their strength, as long as the content itself comes from the author's expertise and the generated writing is thoroughly vetted to make sure there's no hallucinationated misunderstanding in the final text. At the end of the day this would just increase the amount of high quality technical content available, because the set of people with both a good writing skill and a deep technical expertise is much narrower than just the later.

But claiming you didn't use AI when you did breaks all trust between you a your readership and makes the end result pretty much worthless because why read a book if you don't trust the author not to waste your time?

rudedogg•2h ago

I was pretty skeptical too, but it looks legit to me. I've been doing Zig off and on for several years, and have read through the things I feel like I have a good understanding of (though I'm not working on the compiler, contributing to the language, etc.) and they are explained correctly in a logical/thoughtful way. I also work with LLMs a ton at work, and you'd have to spoon-feed the model to get outputs this cohesive.

gamegoblin•1h ago

Pangram[1] flags the introduction as totally AI-written, which I also suspected for the same reasons you did

[1] one of the only AI detectors that actually works, 99.9% accuracy, 0.1% false positive

simonklee•1h ago

It's just an odd claim to make when it feels very much like AI generated content + publish the text anonymously. It's obviously possible to write like this without AI, but I can't remember reading something like this that wasn't written by AI.

It doesn't take away from the fact that someone used a bunch of time and effort on this project.

jasonjmcghee•1h ago

To be clear, I did not dismiss the project or question its value - simply questioned this claim as my experience tells me otherwise and they make a big deal out of it being human written and "No AI" in multiple places.

simonklee•1h ago

I agree with you. After reading a couple of the chapters I'd be surprised if this wasn't written by an LLM.

the-anarchist•1h ago

Doesn't mean that the author might not use AI to optimise legibility. You can write stuff yourself and use an LLM to enhance the reading flow. Especially for non-native speakers it is immensely helpful to do so. Doesn't mean that the content is "AI-generated". The essence is still written by a human.

lukan•1h ago

But then you cannot write that

"The Zigbook intentionally contains no AI-generated content—it is hand-written"

tredre3•1h ago

> Doesn't mean that the author might not use AI to optimise legibility.

I agree that there is a difference between entirely LLM-generated, and LLM-reworded. But the statement is unequivocal to me:

> The Zigbook intentionally contains no AI-generated content—it is hand-written

If an LLM was used in any fashion, then this statement is simply a lie.

chris_pie•1h ago

I don't think so, I think it's just a pompous style of writing.

CathalMullan•1h ago

Pretty clear it's all AI. The @zigbook account only has 1 activity prior to publishing this repo, and that's an issue where they mention "ai has made me too lazy": https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/272725

smj-edison•47m ago

After reading the first five chapters, I'm leaning this way. Not because of a specific phrase, but because the pacing is way off. It's really strange to start with symbol exporting, then moving to while loops, then moving to slices. It just feels like a strange order. The "how it works" and "key insights" also feel like a GPT summarization. Maybe that's just a writing tic, but the combination of correct grammar with bad pacing isn't something I feel like a human writer has. Either you have neither (due to lack of practice), or both (because when you do a lot of writing you also pick up at least some ability to pace). Could be wrong though.

ants_everywhere•4m ago

IMO HN should add a guideline about not insinuating things were written by AI. It degrades the quality of the site similarly to many of the existing rules.

Arguably it would be covered by some of the existing rules, but it's become such a common occurrence that it may need singling out.

PaulRobinson•2h ago

This looks fantastic. Pedagogically it makes sense to me, and I love this approach of not just teaching a language, but a paradigm (in this case, low-level systems programming), in a single text.

Zig got me excited when I stumbled into it about a year ago, but life got busy and then the io changes came along and I thought about holding off until things settled down - it's still a very young language.

But reading the first couple of chapters has piqued my interest in a language and the people who are working with it in a way I've not run into since I encountered Ruby in ~2006 (before Rails hit v1.0), I just hope the quality stays this high all the way through.

amitav1•2h ago

It looks cool! No experience with Zig so can't comment on the accuracy, but I will take a look at it this week. Also a bit annoying that there is no PDF version that I could download as the website is pretty slow. After taking a look at the repository (https://github.com/zigbook/zigbook/tree/main), each page seems to be written in AsciiDoc, so I'll take a look about compiling a PDF version later today.

gigatexal•2h ago

there's no way someone made this for free, where do I donate? im gonna get so much value from this this feels like stealing

cultofmetatron•2h ago

SAME. I was looking for a donation button myself! I've paid for worse quality instructional material. this is just the sort of thing I'm happy to support

gamegoblin•1h ago

It's AI-written FWIW

though maybe AI is getting to the point it can do stuff like this somewhat decently

popcar2•1h ago

The first page says none of the book was written by AI

gamegoblin•1h ago

Yes, it's a false claim

skor•1h ago

how do you know this? let us know please, thanks. edit, I see you used this to check: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45948220

gamegoblin•1h ago

pangram.com, the most accurate and lowest false positive AI detector

https://www.pangram.com/blog/third-party-pangram-evals

fuzzy_biscuit•1h ago

Why does this feel like an ad? I've seen pangram mentioned a few times now, always with that tagline. It feels like a marketing department skulking around comments.

gamegoblin•40m ago

The other pangram mention elsewhere in this comment section is also me -- I'm totally unaffiliated with them, just a fan of their tool

I specify the accuracy and false positive rate because otherwise skeptics in comment sections might otherwise think it's one of the plethora of other AI detection tools that don't really work

wosined•2h ago

Some text is unreadable because it is so small.

serial_dev•2h ago

It was very hard to find a link to the table of contents… then I tried opening it and the link didn’t work. I’m on iOS. I’d have loved to take a look quickly what’s in the book…

hoten•1h ago

https://github.com/zigbook/zigbook/tree/main/pages

p2detar•1h ago

Hmm, the explanation of Allocators is much more detailed in the book, but I feel although more compact, it seems much more reasonable in the language reference. [0]

I'll keep exploring this book though, it does look very impressive.

0 - https://ziglang.org/documentation/master/#Memory

shuraman7•1h ago

It's really hard to believe this isn't AI generated, but today I was trying to use the HTTP server from std after the 0.15 changes, couldn't figure out how it's supposed to work until I've searched repos in Github. LLM's couldn't figure it out as well, they were stuck in a loop of changing/breaking things even further until they arrived at the solution of using the deprecated way. so I guess this is actually handwritten which is amazing because it looks like the best resource I've seen up until now for Zig

tredre3•1h ago

I've had the same experience as you with Zig. I quite love the idea of it Zig but the undocumented churn is a bit much. I wish they had auto generated docs that reflect the current state of the stdlib, at least. Even if it just listed the signatures with no commentary.

I was trying to solve a simple problem but Google, the official docs, and LLMs were all out of date. I eventually found what I needed in Zig's commit history, where they casually renamed something without updating the docs. It's been renamed once more apparently, still not reflected in the docs :shrugs:.

smj-edison•53m ago

Wait, doesn't `zig std` launch the autogenerated docs?

blks•22m ago

> It's really hard to believe this isn't AI generated

Case of a person who is relying on LLMs so much he cannot imagine doing something big by themselves.

shuraman7•15m ago

it's not only the size - it was pushed all at once, anonymously, using text that highly resembles that of an AI. I still think that some of the text is AI generated. perhaps not the code, but the wording of the text just reeks of AI

smj-edison•1h ago

It's pretty incredible how much ground this covers! However, the ordering feels a little confusing to me.

One example is in chapter 1. It talks about symbol exporting based on platform type, without explaining ELF. This is before talking about while loops.

It's had some interesting nuggets so far, and I've followed along since I'm familiar with some of the broad strokes, but I can see it being confusing to someone new to systems programming.

johnfn•1h ago

The book claims it’s not written with the help of AI, but the content seems so blatantly AI-generated that I’m not sure what to conclude, unless the author is the guy OpenAI trained GPT-5 on:

> Learning Zig is not just about adding a language to your resume. It is about fundamentally changing how you think about software.

“Not just X - Y” constructions.

> By Chapter 61, you will not just know Zig; you will understand it deeply enough to teach others, contribute to the ecosystem, and build systems that reflect your complete mastery.

More not just X - Y constructions with parallelism.

Even the “not made with AI” banner seems AI generated! Note the 3 item parallelism.

> The Zigbook intentionally contains no AI-generated content—it is hand-written, carefully curated, and continuously updated to reflect the latest language features and best practices.

I don’t have anything against AI generated content. I’m just confused what’s going on here!

EDIT: after scanning the contents of the book itself I don’t believe it’s AI generated - perhaps it’s just the intro?

EDIT again: no, I’ve swung back to the camp of mostly AI generated. I would believe it if you told me the author wrote it by hand and then used AI to trim the style, but “no AI” seems hard to believe. The flow charts in particular stand out like a sore thumb - they just don’t have the kind of content a human would put in flow charts.

geysersam•57m ago

Clearly your perception of what is AI generated is wrong. You can't tell something is AI generated only because it uses "not just X - Y" constructions. I mean, the reason AI text often uses it is because it's common in the training material. So of course you're going to see it everywhere.

johnfn•41m ago

Find me some text from pre-AI that uses so many of these constructions in such close proximity if it’s really so easy - I don’t think you’ll have much luck. Good authors have many tactics in their rhetorical bag of tricks. They don’t just keep using the same one over and over.

finder83•29m ago

Every time I read things like this, it makes me think that AI was trained off of me. Using semicolons, utilizing classic writing patterns, and common use of compare and contrast are all examples of how they teach to write essays in high school and college. They're also all examples of how I think and have learned to communicate.

I'm not sure what to make of that either.

johnfn•24m ago

To be explicit, it’s not general hallmarks of good writing. It’s exactly two common constructions: not X but Y, and 3 items in parallel. These two pop up in extreme disproportion to normal “good writing”. Good writers know to save these tricks for when they really want to make a point.

finder83•19m ago

Interesting, I'll have to look for those.

VerifiedReports•1h ago

They named a programming language after a wireless protocol?

mjaniczek•28m ago

What is it with HN and the "oh, I thought {NAME} is the totally different tool {NAME}" comments? Is it some inside joke?

gigatree•38m ago

inb4 people start putting a standardized “not AI generated” symbol in website headers

mendelmaleh•31m ago

> The Zigbook intentionally contains no AI-generated content—it is hand-written, carefully curated, and continuously updated to reflect the latest language features and best practices.

I think it's time to have a badge for non LLM content, and avoid the rest.

gregsadetsky•28m ago

There seems to be https://notbyai.fyi/ and https://no-ai-icon.com/ ..!

Rasthor•3m ago

There is also Brainmade: https://brainmade.org/

pton_xd•3m ago

> By Chapter 61, you will not just know Zig; you will understand it deeply enough to teach others, contribute to the ecosystem, and build systems that reflect your complete mastery.

This entire book is AI generated. The phrasing of every sentence, the bolding, bulleted lists, everything. Every paragraph is straight from a LLM. I picked one random sentence as a sample to quote but you could really flip to any page.

Pretty funny.

brcmthrowaway•9m ago

Need this but to learn AI

Open-source Zig book

Tracking users with favicons, even in incognito mode

Heretic: Automatic censorship removal for language models

The fate of "small" open source

The Pragmatic Programmer: 20th Anniversary Edition (2023)

Dark Pattern Games

What if you don't need MCP at all?

Peter Thiel sells off all Nvidia stock, stirring bubble fears

Z3 API in Python: From Sudoku to N-Queens in Under 20 Lines

I have recordings proving Coinbase knew about breach months before disclosure

I finally understand Cloudflare Zero Trust tunnels

FPGA Based IBM-PC-XT

Linux mode setting, from the comfort of OCaml

Decoding Leibniz Notation (2024)

Fourier Transforms

Brimstone: ES2025 JavaScript engine written in Rust

Why Bcrypt Can Be Unsafe for Password Hashing?

Your Land, My Land (Offrange) – Lithium vs. Lettuce in the Imperial Valley, CA

Shell Grotto, Margate

Anthropic’s paper smells like bullshit

Garbage collection is useful

Waiting for SQL:202y: Group by All

De Bruijn Numerals

The Man Who Keeps Predicting the Web's Death

Measuring the doppler shift of WWVB during a flight

Holes (1970) [pdf]

Vintage Large Language Models

Running the "Reflections on Trusting Trust" Compiler (2023)

AirPods libreated from Apple's ecosystem

Adding an imaginary unit to a finite field

Open-source Zig book

Tracking users with favicons, even in incognito mode

Heretic: Automatic censorship removal for language models

The fate of "small" open source

The Pragmatic Programmer: 20th Anniversary Edition (2023)

Dark Pattern Games

What if you don't need MCP at all?

Peter Thiel sells off all Nvidia stock, stirring bubble fears

Z3 API in Python: From Sudoku to N-Queens in Under 20 Lines

I have recordings proving Coinbase knew about breach months before disclosure

I finally understand Cloudflare Zero Trust tunnels

FPGA Based IBM-PC-XT

Linux mode setting, from the comfort of OCaml

Decoding Leibniz Notation (2024)

Fourier Transforms

Brimstone: ES2025 JavaScript engine written in Rust

Why Bcrypt Can Be Unsafe for Password Hashing?

Your Land, My Land (Offrange) – Lithium vs. Lettuce in the Imperial Valley, CA

Shell Grotto, Margate

Anthropic’s paper smells like bullshit

Garbage collection is useful

Waiting for SQL:202y: Group by All

De Bruijn Numerals

The Man Who Keeps Predicting the Web's Death

Measuring the doppler shift of WWVB during a flight

Holes (1970) [pdf]

Vintage Large Language Models

Running the "Reflections on Trusting Trust" Compiler (2023)

AirPods libreated from Apple's ecosystem

Adding an imaginary unit to a finite field

Open-source Zig book

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