Open-source Zig book
62 comments
·November 16, 2025gigatree
inb4 people start putting a standardized “not AI generated” symbol in website headers
amitav1
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.
p2detar
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.
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johnfn
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?
geysersam
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
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.
smj-edison
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.
shuraman7
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
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
Wait, doesn't `zig std` launch the autogenerated docs?
jasonjmcghee
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.
CathalMullan
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
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.
simonklee
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
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
I agree with you. After reading a couple of the chapters I'd be surprised if this wasn't written by an LLM.
gamegoblin
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
rudedogg
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.
chris_pie
I don't think so, I think it's just a pompous style of writing.
the-anarchist
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.
tredre3
> 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.
lukan
But then you cannot write that
"The Zigbook intentionally contains no AI-generated content—it is hand-written"
PaulRobinson
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
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?
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serial_dev
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…
wosined
Some text is unreadable because it is so small.
null
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.