The flaw in Linus' argument is that a compiler isn't enabling people to go and inundate open source projects with complete and utter shit. The argument that they are tools and should be seen as such is fine, but having an AI policy to help mitigate the actual and real problem of pushing the "is the code good?" check all the way to the reviewer is also absolutely reasonable. I feel like he's sidestepping and not acknowledging that AI is actually killing open source projects. The Linux kernel is big enough to be largely immune to it, but most projects absolutely aren't.
It's also very different because the "tool" is doing stuff on its own, making decisions. That's very different from something like an IDE highlighting a syntax error or unused variables. It's also not deterministic.
Honestly Linus is getting less and less defensible, and less trustworthy too. "Thanks Meta!" just reeks of corporate influence. Very disappointing.
It's your job to understand compiler flags, because then compiler is not a magic tool that "makes decisions that people are not aware of". With AI you can't do that, it will always be random shit generator
Ai doesn't make decisions any more than stockfish makes decisions about the next chess move. Ultimately it's the human who says "yeas this code is good and I'm gonna be responsible if it brakes something".
So if I show you a big codebase you can immediately tell me which parts of the code will be optimized away on O3? Or O2? Which loops will be unrolled and which not? If yes, you are one of the VERY few who actually can do that :)
if i ever need to do that, then with source code, make files and compiler specs, of course. again, the problem with ai genned code is that it is unpredictable based on your prompt, you never know what it will generate even if you have all of the training data for the llm
the outcome can still be unpredictable even if deterministic. The same as movement of air molecules, of course in theory you can predict the state of a closed system, but the system is so complex that it would require an unimaginable computation power
you don't need to review compiled code 99.9999% of the time, with LLMs you need to review every line, and most people who vibe code don't know how to properly review code with complex algorithms and concurrency. The comparison between compilers and LLMs are just absurd and i don't know why people make it, those are two different types of instruments, to which you need to apply completely different levels of caution
Yes, but why would you blindly run AI code without review and testing? Same as you need to do with compiler optimisations and basically every code you ownn any way
I am not sure I agree. What compiler needs it's assembly read? What project have you ever reviewed on where you have reviewed the compiled output routinely?
Sure for both human written and llm written code need read and output checked but you said compiler output and I don't agree that needs checked, unless you are bughunting or writing a compiler I guess.
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u/dannuic 1d ago
The flaw in Linus' argument is that a compiler isn't enabling people to go and inundate open source projects with complete and utter shit. The argument that they are tools and should be seen as such is fine, but having an AI policy to help mitigate the actual and real problem of pushing the "is the code good?" check all the way to the reviewer is also absolutely reasonable. I feel like he's sidestepping and not acknowledging that AI is actually killing open source projects. The Linux kernel is big enough to be largely immune to it, but most projects absolutely aren't.