alt Hacker NewsI could point to the same examples this article refers to: the Bun blog post says "Having a rigid style guide [in Zig] with clear ownership expectations explicitly spelled out in the type system was a real option for Bun" and presents no technical reason why they didn't choose (or even TRY) that. They handwave it with "This is and ergonomic than the Zig we expect".
Why was it in their own words a real option? And why did they not go for it? This is the technical substance I'm looking for: an engineer explaining what options have been considered and what wanted and unwanted tradeoffs they present.
Also only mentioning figures for the platforms that saw an improvement is sketchy. "With ICU and code folding Windows and Linux get 20% smaller", what about macOS? Why did it not see the same gains? The fact that they don't mention it makes me think that they don't KNOW, and isn't confidence inspiring coming from the engineer who SHOULD know.
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Every blog post has infinite things it does not mention.
"Technical substance" simply requires that some technically substantive things are mentioned. Which was indeed the case.
The very next sentence justifies why they didn't do it: it argues that they would have ended up with what was technically Zig but something that was much less ergonomic than what would be expected from Zig.
You can argue that that's a bad justification for not doing it, but that's a debate on the technical merits, not a claim that they didn't provide justification.