A disappointing take because it contains some broad statements lacking nuance this requires. Comes across like he's just tired of talking about it or whatever. But that's not good enough. As with all things AI, it isn't about the tools or using them, it's about the scale. The scale of impact is immense and we're not ready to handle it in a mutitude of areas because of all the areas technology touches.
You're not wrong but there's no need to digress further than the project he manages. Also many seem to think it's wrong to like some parts about a public figure (which he clearly is) while not agreeing with everything he says. You don't have to like his stance on this!!
He's not writing code, he merges 200 PR in 2 weeks. From this POV an AI eases his workload, but he makes no difference whether he dislikes AI generated code or is just fine with found bugs by it.
Still he has no idea whether the person suggesting a feature or fix has any actual knowledge about the code so when problems come up there's no one there taking responsibility and i think that's shortsighted.
Crazy that this hasn't got more traction here. Maybe people missed this thread.
Agentic cli based coding "got good" (around Oct/Nov 2025), and after just a short trial period, most devs in our company were convinced enough to start using it. The graph from "not using it much" to "95% of code written by AI" was incredibly steep. It was obvious from around that point, but particularly from around Opus 4.6 that this was actually, very, very good, provided you understand the failure cases and worked to eliminate them.
Ever since then the story has been about the % of developers denying it can write anything decent dwindling, and right now there are very few left who say this. Places like reddit and HN seem to attract a lot of them though, so weirdly, despite in the real world most professional software developers using these tools prolifically, it can seem as though it is 50/50 here.
When even someone like Linus Torvalds (the most crotchety of crotchetiers) is accepting it, you must know you're on the wrong side by denying it at this point. Surely the cognitive dissonance must be grating?
The take is reasonable, but as we all know Linus has stopped coding since forever at this point in time. It's easy for him to make this statements in the position he is in
I think Linus' position even pre-LLM-coding – basically not trusting any code he gets, and not writing any code himself, just reviewing a ton of it – is strikingly similar to how most people now do "software engineering" (or vibe coding/agentic engineering or whatever you want to call what we're doing nowadays).
From his perspective, the only things that changed is that he can more quickly/better review code and find bugs, and maintainers below him are somewhat more annoyed due to the influx of AI slop.
8 comments
[ 5.0 ms ] story [ 30.9 ms ] threadHe's not writing code, he merges 200 PR in 2 weeks. From this POV an AI eases his workload, but he makes no difference whether he dislikes AI generated code or is just fine with found bugs by it.
Still he has no idea whether the person suggesting a feature or fix has any actual knowledge about the code so when problems come up there's no one there taking responsibility and i think that's shortsighted.
Agentic cli based coding "got good" (around Oct/Nov 2025), and after just a short trial period, most devs in our company were convinced enough to start using it. The graph from "not using it much" to "95% of code written by AI" was incredibly steep. It was obvious from around that point, but particularly from around Opus 4.6 that this was actually, very, very good, provided you understand the failure cases and worked to eliminate them.
Ever since then the story has been about the % of developers denying it can write anything decent dwindling, and right now there are very few left who say this. Places like reddit and HN seem to attract a lot of them though, so weirdly, despite in the real world most professional software developers using these tools prolifically, it can seem as though it is 50/50 here.
When even someone like Linus Torvalds (the most crotchety of crotchetiers) is accepting it, you must know you're on the wrong side by denying it at this point. Surely the cognitive dissonance must be grating?
I think Linus' position even pre-LLM-coding – basically not trusting any code he gets, and not writing any code himself, just reviewing a ton of it – is strikingly similar to how most people now do "software engineering" (or vibe coding/agentic engineering or whatever you want to call what we're doing nowadays).
From his perspective, the only things that changed is that he can more quickly/better review code and find bugs, and maintainers below him are somewhat more annoyed due to the influx of AI slop.