Andrew Kelley

Lead developer & president of Zig Software Foundation.

Public Key

npub1v5nnp42pq83r34k7ja08ss92la9vagjy8qkwye9wnv9s4jy3vwtsehyt9x

NIP-05 Address

andrewrk@mastodon-social.mostr.pub

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsx2fes64qsrc3c6m0fwhncgz407jkw5fzrst8zvjhfkzc2ezgk89cpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0dszfg9fy

Publishing to

relay.damus.io

nos.lol

Author Public Key

npub1v5nnp42pq83r34k7ja08ss92la9vagjy8qkwye9wnv9s4jy3vwtsehyt9x

Show more details

Last Notes

2026-08-20 00:10:33 UTC

holy shit I have been sleeping on jiten.moe so hard

2026-08-08 02:21:18 UTC

Are the Japanese OK? 🤣
From my grammar lesson this morning
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/117/057/480/013/761/815/original/2777b6da3b25237b.png

2026-08-02 01:16:01 UTC

Text adaptation of my Software Should Work 2026 keynote
https://andrewkelley.me/post/dont-take-black-pill.html

2026-07-14 09:37:59 UTC

I've been sleeping on Krita (FOSS digital painting software) big time

2026-07-14 09:31:55 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…j05z but even done poorly is extremely disruptive and rearranges your neurons to some degree

2026-07-12 16:33:08 UTC

Advertisement is literally non-consensual mind control

2026-07-09 10:11:41 UTC

My Thoughts on the Bun Rust Rewrite
https://andrewkelley.me/post/my-thoughts-bun-rust-rewrite.html

2026-07-01 01:11:25 UTC

zig now ships its package management functionality in source form and compiles it on demand
https://ziglang.org/devlog/2026/#2026-06-30

2026-06-28 03:14:36 UTC

don't worry everyone. codeberg is down, but thankfully, we all collectively, wisely invested in version control technology that stores issue metadata, merge request metadata, and user account metadata in the same decentralized manner as the code, so we can continue to work like normal, and periodically synchronize with each other, peer-to-peer style
good thing we didn't foolishly all get used to using a separate DB for metadata that causes vendor lock in and requires high web server uptime

2026-06-25 18:00:15 UTC

attempted to make dark synthwave, but I wasn't sure how to develop it further so I just started messing around with guitar
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/116/812/044/645/097/249/original/08514d718e4699ca.mp3

2026-06-16 20:51:00 UTC

Welcoming Zig's newest core team members:
https://ziglang.org/news/welcoming-new-team-members/

2026-06-05 22:52:35 UTC

man this is crazy. such a valuable project, such a weird choice to write it in python instead of javascript
also weird to only support deno and not node
WARNING: [youtube] No supported JavaScript runtime could be found. Only deno is enabled by default; to use another runtime add --js-runtimes RUNTIME[:PATH] to your command/config. YouTube extraction without a JS runtime has been deprecated, and some formats may be missing. See https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/wiki/EJS for details on installing one

2026-05-27 01:57:46 UTC

This changeset heavily reworks the internal mechanism of the zig build system, however, it is mostly non-breaking from an API perspective, with a few exceptions... https://ziglang.org/devlog/2026/#2026-05-26

2026-05-23 23:19:55 UTC

hot take: techno peaked 18 years ago at Dance With My Pants (Club Mix Edit) - Crazy Rockerz

2026-05-17 18:06:02 UTC

The domains in which a programming language is popular influences the ecosystem. I'm deeply grateful to Jarred and Anthropic for giving Zig communities a chance to reroll for something other than LLMs. Hoping for better than a nat 1 next time

2026-05-08 23:59:07 UTC

In a way, computing embodies the essence of humanity. We take a blank canvas of electrical fields - a purely physical phenomenon, devoid of inherent meaning - and imbue it with assumptions, values, and purpose, manifesting order despite a chaotic, uncaring universe; creating beautiful pockets of defiant structure, each clock cycle shielding these brittle gardens from entropy's relentless encroachment.

2026-04-18 17:21:20 UTC

Alex Rønne Petersen joined the Zig core team in October of 2024. Hard to believe it’s already been a year and a half since then!
https://ziglang.org/news/core-team-spotlight-alexrp/

2026-04-14 16:12:32 UTC

Release notes are up!
I wish it went without saying, but these notes are completely written by hand.
https://ziglang.org/download/0.16.0/release-notes.html

2026-04-13 18:34:21 UTC

Zig 0.16.0 is tagged. Release notes are just about completed and will be published in about 20 hours when the tarballs finish building.
As it turns out, it takes a while to build LLVM 27 times on one computer! That's how many different targets we provide compiler binaries for now - all cross compiled from one host.

2026-04-11 17:44:47 UTC

in my experience people who say "I used genai but only for editing" are lying through their teeth

2026-04-09 22:00:05 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…h3v3 @nprofile…rjk0
never mind
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/116/376/992/320/069/056/original/2bd5e040fa630e54.png

2026-04-09 21:58:52 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…h3v3 @nprofile…rjk0 I think I tried the kde mail client but it was pretty incomplete or crashing or something
but it's been a while, I bet they've done more good work on it

2026-04-09 14:55:10 UTC

honestly I'd rather let it die. I hate this application with a burning passion
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/116/375/321/799/671/740/original/5f01f6f316ab6b8e.png

2026-04-08 14:24:53 UTC

Thanks to bypassing the C/C++ API for constructing LLVM modules and instead building .bc files directly in memory, Zig's LLVM backend now supports incremental compilation.
You'll still have to wait ages for LLVM to convert bitcode into object files, but at least you'll get instant type checking!
https://ziglang.org/devlog/2026/#2026-04-08

2026-02-13 23:55:58 UTC

io_uring and Grand Central Dispatch std.Io implementations landed
https://ziglang.org/devlog/2026/#2026-02-13

2026-02-08 20:56:23 UTC

My WiFi password is "The Wife i Password is" inquotesallwords capitalizedexceptwordsstartingwiththeletter'i' no spaces ALL CAPS
...my friends hate me

2026-02-07 08:16:05 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…h6ty that's correct

2026-02-07 03:50:46 UTC

If you have a Zig project with dependencies, two big changes just landed which I think you will be interested to learn about.
https://ziglang.org/devlog/2026/#2026-02-06

2026-02-04 22:14:39 UTC

I don't have any enemies... only temporarily embarrassed comrades

2026-02-03 23:02:38 UTC

Bypassing Kernel32.dll for Fun and Nonprofit
https://ziglang.org/devlog/2026/#2026-02-03

2026-02-01 01:35:19 UTC

Over the past month or so, several enterprising contributors have taken an interest in the zig libc subproject. The idea here is to incrementally delete redundant code, by providing libc functions as Zig standard library wrappers rather than as vendored C source files. In many cases, these functions are one-to-one mappings, such as memcpy or atan2, or trivially wrap a generic function, like strnlen.
Full devlog:
https://ziglang.org/devlog/2026/#2026-01-31

2026-01-16 21:04:01 UTC

Profession by Isaac Asimov (1957)
https://web.archive.org/web/20201109034130/https://www.abelard.org/asimov.php

2026-01-13 03:23:11 UTC

if I had a billion dollars, I'd light it on fire.
I like my job and I hate paperwork!

2026-01-12 00:39:18 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…h6ty yep! but also reverse engineering them and cracking DRM also allowed, also leaks of proprietary source code are fair game

2026-01-12 00:35:23 UTC

let's just agree to abolish copyright! ai companies can have all the data, and pirating is legally protected

2026-01-02 21:40:42 UTC

we've built our global economy on the premise that software has a certain bar of quality, which as it turns out was based only on the goodwill of early enthusiast programmers.
now that the market has caught up and erased the negotiation power software engineers once enjoyed, the world is careening head first into a harsh reality of bug-ridden, adversarial software at odds with everyday life.
free software is still our north star. it's more important than ever.

2025-12-31 00:47:54 UTC

I just remembered that when writing C++ you can't really cut and paste code without causing bugs, lmao
it's been half a decade since I've had to worry about that

2025-12-18 20:28:54 UTC

computers are so neat. love computers

2025-12-10 19:11:40 UTC

I accidentally derailed #musl by mentioning dishwashers and they're still talking about them 24 hours later 😅

2025-11-29 23:01:38 UTC

idk why people keep insisting on bringing politics to my beautiful programming language
I'm just trying to make good code for everybody, but they're trying to deport my users

2025-11-27 01:53:32 UTC

In this modern era of acquisitions, weak antitrust regulations, and platform capitalism leading to extreme concentrations of wealth, non-profits remain a bastion defending what remains of the commons.
https://ziglang.org/news/migrating-from-github-to-codeberg/

2025-11-24 18:45:11 UTC

"We're all two or three bad decisions away from becoming the ones that we fear and pity" - AJJ

2025-10-29 20:08:13 UTC

text version of my Zigtoberfest demo from last week
https://andrewkelley.me/post/zig-new-async-io-text-version.html

2025-10-28 23:36:59 UTC

can't believe it's 2025 and people are programming in memory unsafe languages like Rust and Go when Fil-C exists

2025-10-02 01:24:18 UTC

https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=75371
😡 😡
they really just calculate a wishful integer and then make a blocking recvmsg
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/115/301/954/261/459/089/original/0ef080b54b917054.png

2025-09-07 06:44:18 UTC

I can't count on one hand how many blog posts I've seen with the thesis statement, "AI coding is productive - believe me because I'm an expert programmer" and then it's some wanker I've never heard of

2025-08-28 06:58:13 UTC

LLMs will be super cool the moment the bubble pops and they become an underground hipster hobby, rather than a load-bearing part of the economy that oligarchs are climbing over each other to to ram down our throats as hard as they can.
I mean they already are super cool but it's hard to notice with all the disgusting pigs surrounding it, trying to become the next GPU slum lords of the 21st century.

2025-06-14 20:08:18 UTC

no gods
no masters

2025-06-08 21:10:34 UTC

big day for the zig project
time to go update those compiler performance benchmarks ;)
https://ziglang.org/devlog/2025/#2025-06-08

2025-05-30 18:58:50 UTC

"it's like copying code from stack overflow" is not the rock solid defense you think it is

2025-05-23 22:13:18 UTC

Zig 0.14.1 (bug fix) release is out. Sorry for the delay, that was longer than intended.

2025-05-10 21:41:41 UTC

Sometimes, people are alright.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/114/485/703/131/964/968/original/ed7303f67116b2fa.png

2025-04-24 03:48:23 UTC

bunch of bot accounts on @nprofile…8x0h are trolling projects, posting LLM generated issues based on the readme, ridiculing the projects
not cool
examples:
https://codeberg.org/elatedplacing9?tab=activity
https://codeberg.org/correctmane417?tab=activity
https://codeberg.org/precociousbooming519?tab=activity

2025-04-05 21:22:19 UTC

What if we made advertising illegal?
🌈 🌞
https://simone.org/advertising/

2025-02-08 05:58:22 UTC

No-libc Zig now outperforms Glibc Zig.
https://ziglang.org/devlog/2025/#2025-02-07

2025-02-07 01:39:11 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…xyvy thanks, I read the paper just now and it helped me to understand why some measurements were favorable and others not - specifically the pattern of one thread allocating and another thread freeing in my simple design will result in ever-growing RSS
I know I "should" start with the paper but for me papers are too boring until I've already tried from first principles

2025-02-06 22:10:21 UTC

last night I had an idea for a fast multi-threaded allocator, whipped it up, and at first glance it outperforms glibc.
need to do some more testing, but it's looking good so far
it's only 212 lines of code!
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/959/219/316/511/070/original/a73373f5c65d6b3b.png

2025-01-27 20:35:20 UTC

feels like every day, 10 things are added to my life's "todo list", and I get 1-2 things done.

2024-12-31 20:07:35 UTC

Really nice SDL3 package for Zig: https://github.com/castholm/SDL
Writeup from the author: https://ziggit.dev/t/sdl3-ported-to-the-zig-build-system-with-example-games/7606?u=andrewrk

2024-12-26 23:18:23 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…gyrf thanks for sharing, really enjoyed this

2024-12-22 20:46:08 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…gyrf @nprofile…lcw2 not a problem if you define bitcast to operate on logical bitwise layout

2024-12-19 21:15:51 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…gyrf most people have like 1 hobby at most. Seems like the person is not noticing that all these things are not concentrated in the same person

2024-12-13 22:31:36 UTC

I updated to @nprofile…vcea Plasma 6.2 yesterday.
Status:
- copy pasting in vim no longer works
- signal-desktop won't start anymore
Looks like a better strategy would have been staying on Plasma 5 / X11 for another year.

2024-12-03 20:42:42 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…gyrf cc @nprofile…ds6f

2024-12-02 23:47:44 UTC

those responsible for overcommit should be thrown out of an airplane

2024-11-30 21:33:48 UTC

If you are planning to learn Zig via Advent of Code this year, I highly recommend the tips from @nprofile…7pdf 's blog post:
https://kristoff.it/blog/advent-of-code-zig/

2024-11-30 20:03:42 UTC

One thing I appreciate about Mastodon is that if I slip into a bad habit of scrolling through the feed too much in one day, I start seeing old posts that I've already seen, and then I realize that I'm doing a bad habit, and that helps me stop checking the site too often.
On other platforms they would do anything to prevent that moment of self-reflection from occurring.

2024-11-18 20:19:31 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…6m2n note that if you're using vim over ssh then there's no ability to sync with the (remote) system clipboard
or maybe you're about to tell me there is and my mind is about to be blown

2024-11-14 22:48:29 UTC

I have a couple images generated by stable diffusion in the slides for my Handmade Seattle talk next week. I know this is somewhat controversial, but I really want to depict a couple scenes in particular and I started working on my slides too late to hire an artist. I think I will roll the dice with how they are received because the image in my head is vivid and the stable diffusion output is close enough to give the audience a glimpse into my imagination.

2024-11-14 01:10:09 UTC

Inside of you are two wolves:
One of them wants to be grammatically correct and put the punctuation inside "the quoted text."
The other one has been programming for 25 years and is howling at the top of its lungs, "I demand proper nesting!".

2024-11-12 23:45:08 UTC

- reply

alternate joke:
what they say: no dependencies
what they mean: over half of the project's line count by volume was written by Sean Barrett
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/472/627/308/735/715/original/cd344672ddbf30b2.png
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/472/633/474/945/109/original/5c31f7b7a17beeeb.png

2024-11-12 23:36:59 UTC

when a C/C++ programmer says "no dependencies" it means they have copied unknown versions of various dependencies into a particular subdirectory of their project.
you can learn a lot about the author's personality by what directory name they choose.
"vendor" -> web developer adjacent
"deps" -> uncomfortably self-aware
"thirdparty" -> unskilled grifter
"common" -> sneaky

2024-09-06 19:39:38 UTC

- reply

@npub17sy…yqjj because the only thing worse than an enemy is an ineffective ally. If they didn't distract us all these years with false hope, we could have been working on a different web browser all this time

2024-09-05 00:16:44 UTC

Mozilla is truly an advertisement company now. From the bottom of my heart, fuck you, everybody at Mozilla.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/082/052/947/055/523/original/99dbaa738cdb2a4b.png

2024-08-23 22:54:12 UTC

https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/013/793/749/114/226/original/c6ec0a51349a0c13.png

2024-08-14 22:08:55 UTC

- reply

@npub1upk…tcwy I purchased one 🙂
how do you like to put posters on the wall? I'm kind of new to decorating tbh

2024-07-18 06:00:54 UTC

In a mad world, only the mad are sane.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/805/964/500/360/918/original/a4a43bd954219464.png

2024-07-08 21:11:29 UTC

Thanks to more incredible work from Zig core team member, Jacob Young, building the Zig compiler from source dropped to under 10 seconds.
This is the kind of thing you can accomplish without being shackled to LLVM.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/752/919/062/462/486/original/01aa2c9cf428e53a.png

2024-06-10 06:45:10 UTC

made some progress this weekend on my music player reboot
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/590/970/956/007/433/original/bf7703c27736f5aa.png

2024-06-05 19:47:21 UTC

I would love to see massive fines for "we respect your privacy" cookie popups.
What we're seeing is either malicious compliance, or gross incompetence, and I don't care which.
Use cookies only for logging users in, and nothing else, and you don't need a popup. It's super obvious.