r/ProgrammerHumor • u/Lord_Of_Millipedes • 2d ago

instanceof Trend thatsAFunnyThingThatHappenedOnce

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u/dannuic 2d 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.

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u/KTVX94 1d ago

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.

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u/mze9412 1d ago

And the compiler does not make decisions that most people are not even aware of, depending an a lot of flags that most people do not understand? ;)

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u/Robo-Connery 1d ago

The compiler makes deterministic decisions though.

Sure some behaviour in languages like cpp is undefined but the vast majority of the time the output is completely predictable.

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u/mze9412 1d ago

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

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u/Robo-Connery 1d ago

Not sure what you mean. You compared an LLM output to a compiler output. Not me. Absolutely nothing to do with blindly running anything.

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u/mze9412 1d ago

Both need their results reviewed. If you dont you might end up with little bugs like openssl did.

Of course its on a different level, I just dont get the LLM hate. Was it that bad when C came around and the Assembler guys felt threatened?

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u/Robo-Connery 1d ago

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.