Definitely very interesting to watch this unfold. I didn't know that Linus expressed a public opinion on AI use for coding until recently, but I think most people would've pinned him as someone who would not accept it. I wonder if he has been following the development of the capabilities of agentic coding, or if he has just been exposed to the more recent and more capable iterations, making it an easier pill to swallow.
It's not that he changed his mind. He said there: "The kind of expectations I have is that people do their best and I expect people to understand what they are doing. But that understanding has very little to do with what tools they use."
A pragmatist could have tried early LLMs and written them off. People are generally hyping them as much now as they have been for a long time, so it is possible to consider the people still promoting them as delusional, as many honestly were about early capabilities. That is the point I was making.
- Comparing the determinism of tools like compilers or editors to llms
- Not acknowledging that llms are much more powerful then the tools we have seen before
- The way he treats his peers
- The lack of taking possible long term consequences for the most important code base on the planet into account
- Not considering the sustainability of llms neither globally (ethics, environmental, social, economy, ...) nor locally (who will maintain the kernel in 10 years?)
- That all coming from an exceptional powerful position
That being said, I don't think llms should be banned, not at all. But their usage must be properly thought out and discussed and arguments like "shut up you dumbass idiots it's just like a compiler" belong to the kindergarten and not to the linux kernel discussion group.
Something I thought was interesting: You could take his rant about C++[1] from 20 years ago and with minimal edits make it an extremely coherent complaint about LLMs and vibe coding.
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[ 2.1 ms ] story [ 25.9 ms ] thread- Comparing the determinism of tools like compilers or editors to llms
- Not acknowledging that llms are much more powerful then the tools we have seen before
- The way he treats his peers
- The lack of taking possible long term consequences for the most important code base on the planet into account
- Not considering the sustainability of llms neither globally (ethics, environmental, social, economy, ...) nor locally (who will maintain the kernel in 10 years?)
- That all coming from an exceptional powerful position
That being said, I don't think llms should be banned, not at all. But their usage must be properly thought out and discussed and arguments like "shut up you dumbass idiots it's just like a compiler" belong to the kindergarten and not to the linux kernel discussion group.
[1] - https://lwn.net/Articles/249460/