Good.
If you didn’t write the code, then you didn’t think through every detail.
If you didn’t think through every detail, then you have gaps in your understanding.
If you have gaps in your understanding, then why are you submitting code and pushing the burden onto someone else to understand it for you?
What makes you think they’d want to accept that burden?
Linus:
Linus’s position seems to be to embrace whatever eases the burden on maintainers. Using an LLM to review patches does that, which is why he was receptive to the Sashiko bot. But he won’t be happy with AI slop patches, for obvious reasons.
Using an LLM to review patches does that, which is why he was receptive to the Sashiko bot.
Funnily enough, I was just reading a post from a dev complaining about the review bot and how it makes developing patches harder.
Previously review comments were from somebody who had experience with the code or subsystem in question, who understood how the whole thing worked. The LLM bot has none of that and will spit out nonsensical comments that the developer now needs to try to understand and verify, so they still have to ping other developers to see if the LLM output makes sense.
This is in line with how a lot of large open source projects are dealing with it
- don’t force people to use an AI tool
- don’t be a jerk to people who choose to use a tool with AI
- you are responsible for how you interact with the project. If it wouldn’t be ok if done by a human, its not ok if done by a bot
Except that you should be a jerk to people who choose to use AI.
Linus:
Tool for making development faster: exists
People who hate that tool and all FOSS that it’s involved in: Hmm I wonder why people aren’t making more software for free
Tool that actively destroys the world in many ways: destroys the world
People who don’t know how to use their brain: Hmm I wonder why people are hating on this tool, must be because they are just haters
Mmmmyeeaahhh, maybe, but I am a couple decades past trying to read the tea leaves with that guy. If that’s what he really meant, he could’ve come out and just said that – but he didn’t. He was intentionally ambiguous, mostly because I think he’s just tired of dealing with the issue (and an increasingly cunty crowd), and wanted to push the responsibility of making a decision off of himself and back onto the users. I will admit that he is far more composed than I would be in his position.
On one hand, I don’t blame him, but on another hand, I really wish he would’ve taken a stance (prefer preferably anti-AI).
He gave a professional response to a gigantic community because he has a professional responsibility to do so. Personally, I think he gave the only response he could. What does he personally think? Like I said, I’m a couple of decades past trying to read the tea leaves on that guy. But you could be right.
