Linus Torvalds On Why AI Works For Him 26
An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: Many open-source developers still dislike AI. The latest example is System76 banning AI-generated content from its COSMIC desktop. At Open Source Summit Europe, Linux creator Linus Torvalds offered a different take: "I actually really like using AI," Torvald told Dirk Hohndel, his good friend and head of Ericsson Software Technology, in their latest discussion. [...] Torvalds said, "I think that you need to be very careful using AI when you're doing something real and important." Torvalds explained he hadn't always felt that way about AI programming. "I used to think it was just not very good -- but now I'm at the point where I actually really like using AI."
"To be fair," he continued, "I don't do a lot of kernel programming. I'm a maintainer. The Linux kernel is a project where other people do the real work, and I act as the collection point. But I still enjoy programming immensely. I think AI is a wonderful tool if you use it correctly and treat it as a tool, and I find it makes programming much more enjoyable." Torvalds recalled, "I started programming in 1981 or so, and back then computers were much simpler, and you could understand what they were doing, and also the programs you compared your own programs to were much simpler."
"It's a different story today," Torvalds said. "The bar in software engineering has grown so high that it's hard to see your own small efforts as worth anything, because you're used to all these polished, professional programs. [...] A lot of people make fun of vibe coding, but I think it's a wonderful way to find joy in programming. It makes you feel like you're doing something relevant. It allows you, as a new programmer, to do things that you would otherwise have a really hard time with."
He continued: "I love the concept of AI as a gateway drug because I was working on my own toy project, the guitar pedal, and I knew what I was doing. I had a user interface that I had written myself in C that was running on a microcontroller that was running on this small screen, and I was like, "This is just stupid. It looks like something from the '80s; I wanted it to look like something from this century. But I don't do Java. I do kernels." "So, I use AI to do the things that I'm bad at," Torvalds went on, "I'd seen all the same YouTube videos you have. Give AI a prompt, and it will do it. So I gave it a prompt, and it did it, and it was horrendous. Then I said, 'Hey, look! I already did this in C. I did it the right way. It's just ugly." Torvalds acknowledged that AI tools are helping identify security vulnerabilities and improve the Linux kernel, but at the cost of overwhelming maintainers with questionable bug reports and superficial fixes. He called some submissions "mindless band-aid kind of patches."
That said, despite AI's growing influence, Torvalds believes Linux's success comes from steady, incremental development rather than sweeping changes. "I'm a big believer in the whole incremental small changes that, over time, turn into big features," he said. The development goal remains "incremental improvement and steady progress all the time."
"To be fair," he continued, "I don't do a lot of kernel programming. I'm a maintainer. The Linux kernel is a project where other people do the real work, and I act as the collection point. But I still enjoy programming immensely. I think AI is a wonderful tool if you use it correctly and treat it as a tool, and I find it makes programming much more enjoyable." Torvalds recalled, "I started programming in 1981 or so, and back then computers were much simpler, and you could understand what they were doing, and also the programs you compared your own programs to were much simpler."
"It's a different story today," Torvalds said. "The bar in software engineering has grown so high that it's hard to see your own small efforts as worth anything, because you're used to all these polished, professional programs. [...] A lot of people make fun of vibe coding, but I think it's a wonderful way to find joy in programming. It makes you feel like you're doing something relevant. It allows you, as a new programmer, to do things that you would otherwise have a really hard time with."
He continued: "I love the concept of AI as a gateway drug because I was working on my own toy project, the guitar pedal, and I knew what I was doing. I had a user interface that I had written myself in C that was running on a microcontroller that was running on this small screen, and I was like, "This is just stupid. It looks like something from the '80s; I wanted it to look like something from this century. But I don't do Java. I do kernels." "So, I use AI to do the things that I'm bad at," Torvalds went on, "I'd seen all the same YouTube videos you have. Give AI a prompt, and it will do it. So I gave it a prompt, and it did it, and it was horrendous. Then I said, 'Hey, look! I already did this in C. I did it the right way. It's just ugly." Torvalds acknowledged that AI tools are helping identify security vulnerabilities and improve the Linux kernel, but at the cost of overwhelming maintainers with questionable bug reports and superficial fixes. He called some submissions "mindless band-aid kind of patches."
That said, despite AI's growing influence, Torvalds believes Linux's success comes from steady, incremental development rather than sweeping changes. "I'm a big believer in the whole incremental small changes that, over time, turn into big features," he said. The development goal remains "incremental improvement and steady progress all the time."
I'm sure AI is great (Score:5, Insightful)
...in the hands of a competent, careful and passionate programmer like Linux Torvalds.
What I worry about is when Bob in the junior software dev team, who does his job to put food on the table, and just good enough to keep his job, uses it to vibe-code company data as his day job.
Re: I'm sure AI is great (Score:3)
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At this point, I'm willing to trust the code Claude produces more than the code that Bob produces. It's far from perfect, but it's better than many a junior dev at this point. I suspect with the next generation of agents, it'll be as good as seniors tbh.
Re:I'm sure AI is great (Score:5, Interesting)
Not likely. Bob will just make bigger messes with AI. That's what is being repeatedly stated in these articles - Only the skilled can get results that aren't a total bodge.
And of course advocates keeps saying, after each big event when each new super super super AI is announced ... and ends as just more of the same, "It'll be better the next gen."
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Define the difference between mess and works. AI makes messy code, but compared to some of the rubbish that low quality human coding farms put out, I'm not actually confident I can say which is worse.
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It's far from perfect, but it's better than many a junior dev at this point.
People who talk about "junior devs" don't know much about the software industry.
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I would interpret what he said as: It's great as a toy.
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Remember when the Romans thought the same about steam engines?
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I'm sure every comparison can be made. Lead was a wonder building material for the Romans too. And don't forget asbestos.
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What pesticides, cleaning agents, microplastics, etc. that we happily consider miraculous materials today will prove to be as harmful to us as lead was to the Romans? Can I tell a plausible story of your brain being as full of microplastics as the Romans were of lead, such that you dismiss as a toy something that may prove to be revolutionary for human civilizations?
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My point exactly. You're no valid argument yourself.
I'm not good at lovely documents (Score:2)
And that's been my experience with AI so far. If I really screw around with it I can get it to do what I wanted to do but I could have just done it myself in the first place. And since I have to check all the work it's doing it's just not worth the effort.
I've be
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“So, I use AI to do the things that I’m bad at,” Torvalds went on,
I guess the key is to use AI to do something you're bad at. Apparently you are good at making lovely documents, so that wasn't effective.
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Can I see AI as evil and degenerate because slashdot commenters who fancy themselves more important than Torvalds say so?
The code generators work because they save work. (Score:2)
"Smart" code generators that can replicate code with some variability based on probabilities derived from their training sets are useful because they can save a lot of menial work. Code generation where you can give clear instructions and/or pseudocode and rely on the code generator to build some of the infrastructural code parts also works well. Ditto for finding bugs and adding minor features postfactum.
Since that's approximately 95% of all software today, yes, it is a huge relief. Where it fails and has
Yeah No (Score:1)
At my employer, like at other s/w shops, AI is being pushed hard. And we recon: let's learn it while the tokens are subsidized and the going is good.
Anyhow, the results it comes up with can be either amazing, or utterly wrongheaded. It takes experience to know which, though.
Recently, some of our non-programmers (e.g. scrum masters) have started to use AI to help with our dev efforts, e.g. fixing failing integration tests or increasing code coverage. They have no idea about code, just that it works or does
Open source has fragmented because of AI (Score:2)
Errrmm ... No.(?!?) (Score:2)
Dude, FOSS has been fragmented since the dawn of time. It's what we lament about every day. "Why can't there be one distro?" "Why so many JS frameworks?" "Oh, yeah, yet another ORM and yet another PHP CMS, just what we needed!" etc.
FOSS certainly doesn't need AI to be the noisy mess that it is. If anything I expect AI to accelerate development for teams who want to get well-rounded user-centric stuff done and know what they're doing.
110% agree with Linus! (Score:2)
"So, I use AI to do the things that I'm bad at."
Absolutely. I totally agree and his reasoning makes total sense to me, it's the same conclusion I would draw.
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Using it to do things that you're bad at means you won't get any better (fine, a lot of the time) but also you can't evaluate the output properly as you don't understand it, and of course you get impressed by observing (sometimes just apparent) competency. Using it to do things that you're good at, erodes your skills.
AI is great for thing that do not matter... (Score:2)
But when you have to review and take responsibility for thousands of lines AI spews it is quite another story...
I have to deliver more and take responsibility for something that is harder and makes more time to review...
I hate my work now... AI took fun from me... in return I got much more responsibility and boring review work...
But how do you use it ? (Score:2)
When trying to do something I know nothing about, it just gives me standard boilerplate examples, but I could find them by myself just reading the doc.
When learning very obscure or uncommon protocols, it is no better than me.
When dealing with a large codebase (big makefile or cmake), you can't upload the whole thing to chatgpt, so how do you tell it to refactor something ? Maybe I'm showing my age but I don't get it. Maybe it works with
C-Suite: you are doing it wrong (Score:2)
The C-Suite is doing it wrong, the idea is not to require code reviews by people, let AI do the code reviews of the AI generated code. That will produce a second layer of thankless jobs and unmotivated employees sucking down salary and health care. Clearly, the answer is to go one layer further and have a bot review a bot's review of a bot's code.
You can see where this is headed, yes? Eventually you have an employee base that is unmotivated and still sucking down salary and health care, at least the ones st