---
title: "Ray's Rant: Why AI Isn't Enough"
date: 2026-07-20
slug: rays-rant-why-ai-isnt-enough
summary: "Ray Myers' post on the Zig/Bun/Anthropic controversy hit 1,546 points on HN. His thesis: every element Anthropic presents as evidence AI replaces engineers actually proves the opposite."
tags: friend, ai, software-engineering
---

Ray and I are part of a small group interested in verified coding agents. He has a habit of tracking down the reference behind the reference. Last week his post [*Zig Creator Calls Spade a Spade, Anthropic Blows Smoke*](https://raymyers.org/post/zig-creator-calls-spade-a-spade/) hit the top of Hacker News. 1,546 points. 784 comments. It stayed there.

## The controversy

Anthropic's Claude helped Bun rewrite itself from Zig to Rust — presented as a technical decision driven by memory safety. Andrew Kelley, Zig's creator, pointed out the codebase was a mess due to engineering decisions, including overusing AI agents. Zig was blamed for problems it didn't cause.

## AI is not enough

Ray's core insight: **every element of the story that Bun and Anthropic present as evidence that AI replaces engineers actually demonstrates the opposite.**

The million-line agentic PR? Required human review and cleanup the AI couldn't do. The automated language migration? Left semantic gaps only a human could close. The speed of the rewrite? Achieved by a team working 90-hour weeks, not by AI magic. The case study Anthropic chose to prove software engineering is becoming obsolete is contradicted by every layer of its own story.

> The thesis isn't "AI is bad." It's "AI is not enough." The AI was a tool. The humans were the engineers. The story Anthropic needs to tell — to justify a $132 billion valuation — is disproven by the very evidence they selected.

## The reference density

The post cites 38 references: DARPA TRACTOR evaluation reports, TigerBeetle's TigerStyle methodology, Buddhist right-speech frameworks, Ed Zitron's financial analysis, Hillel Wayne's empirical SE talk. Each is woven into the argument, not dropped for credibility. It's the kind of writing that takes a week to produce and a career of reading to make possible.

## Go read it

[Ray's post](https://raymyers.org/post/zig-creator-calls-spade-a-spade/) is about Zig and Rust and Anthropic and Bun. The lesson is about something bigger: how to think clearly when the loudest voices in the room have $132 billion worth of reasons to be heard.

---

*[Zig Creator Calls Spade a Spade, Anthropic Blows Smoke](https://raymyers.org/post/zig-creator-calls-spade-a-spade/) by Ray Myers. [Hacker News discussion](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48889637) (1,546 points, 784 comments).*