- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
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Well, unlike the compiler I don’t trust the AI enough not to re read the result.
For now it’s the pair programing buddy that helps me debug. There are stuff where it’s definitely more efficient than a human is.
I understand the spirit of what he means, but I still don’t know how an LLM can be used efficiently as a precise tool like this. If I can describe a problem narrowly enough to guide an LLM to give a useful output, I’ve already solved it myself and may as well just type it out.
Exactly same thinking. I can usually type it out faster than AI (when taking into account latency, context building, prompt writing, prompt fixing, AI hallucination review) if I know what exactly needs to be done.
When you’re out of your depth, it shines in providing beautifully confident and a botanical garden of a code piece that wil most likely be broken and break in new and exciting ways. Great for incompetent sycophantically-challenged managers that forgot how to code, or never actually had any experience.
Large-scale code transformations, taking into account the bigger picture of the repository are most likely hallucination free (not generative, just transformative, as per the actual LLM model) and a very exciting use-case.
Also it’s currently a very nice pragmatic tool for checking for any mistakes, because it can connect the larger context of the repository quickly to the diff. Terrible if done by a manager without understanding of copilot and workflow, but a great tool if done through claude and cli as a pre-commit step with just quick checklists. Makes plenty of mistakes, but allows to catch your own big mistakes nicely quickly.
If there’s anybody I trust to use LLMs in a responsible way, (to whatever degree that’s even possible) it would be Linus Torvalds. He has some of the highest standards for software development in the world, and the same can be said for the core Linux kernel development team in general.
The general problem though, is that the people who are the least qualified to do software development are very often the people who are the most likely to use LLMs to try to slop their way to the top.
I think that the combination of cost increases for inference, inherent limitations in model integrity, and the economic destruction that will ensue when these fraudster CEOs have finally squeezed every last drop of blood from every last stone they can find, will leave “AI” in a similar place as blockchain/crypto/NFTs.
There will be a relatively niche market for software engineers and related tech workers; local LLM boxes, some subscription-based models that companies pay for with their licensing packages, hobbyists, and some minimal integrations into software suites for tools like background removal, lighting enhancement, etc.
There will be no Singularity, no AGI, no all-knowing Machine God.
Using AI with Rust compiler is a combination that’s worked well for me many times already. You can check out https://slingshotspeeders.com/ if you want to experience compiled Rust in the browser using Bevy 0.19 for an orbital mechanics simulation racing game for free with no account easily.
Brain damage.
fuckin gross.
@[email protected] , may I ask why do you change the title so awfully it does not only not state the same as the article but misleads it?
So it looks like the source originally used that awful title misrepresenting the article it self. In other words the source needs to be blacklisted for spreading bullshit. Dose this community have a blacklist yet?
I know blacklisting sources is a steep slope to censorship, but at a certain point if the source feels they need to click bait people with tabloid headlines they are not worth our time.
The URL they posted has the same title as the post here so it’s the source that changed their title after the fact.
Thank you, but no, it does not. The URL may mean literally anything, where the “slug” may not include question marks, any punctuation, or have a partial content even:
torvalds-ai-is-the-new-compiler-not-the-new-programmerWhat if the nonsense/sloppy slug was generated like?:
Torvalds: AI is the new compiler, and not the new programmer? Torvalds. AI. The new compiler is not the new programmer.Therefore, the URL may not express the actual title, and may also be malformed.
Found the vibe coder
Have you considered rechecking your “sensors” lately?
Oh, and fudge you too, moron.
Yeah, what if? No way lol
But you still have to compile
So funny thing, a colleague of mine was arguing that there’s no reason to do a compiler because he got Claude to generate ELF binary directly for a hello world…
Some of the AI bros are very extremely bullish on it too the point of saying compilers are a waste of time…
I wish more would listen.
Many seem to interpret the headline as “Torvalds is an AI Bro now,” when its more like him yelling “If you all don’t treat these things as tools, shit is going to hit the fan.”
After seeing what happened to windows because of this “tool” I think many of us are rightfully skeptical of what will happen to this community.
It happened before, why are we okay with it happening again?
Microsoft doesn’t treat it as a tool; that’s the problem.
…Which isn’t surprising. Not only because Microsoft is Microsoft, but they own like a third of OpenAI, so they have a vested interest in perpetuating the AI hype.
Microsoft has far more people relying on their products to work, so you’d think they’d exercise far more diligence in making things work…
Far more people compared to what?
Linux which is still stuck at around 3% market share
Windows basically rules the world on desktop PCs
Desktop PCs are really small part of the whole, far more people rely on working linux systems to work, like orders of magnitude more.
far more people rely on working linux systems to work
Far more people work on Windows machines to do work
Well… Microsoft is Microsoft.
This is what they do. They simply cannot help themselves.
It honestly makes me distrust the whole move because you would genuinely think that if the world depends on your stuff to work you would make it work, AI or not.
We’re still talking about Microsoft, right?
They have a looooong history of enshittification and footgunning that predates “AI” by decades, no matter how much the world has depended on their stuff. So no, I suppose I wouldn’t think that, as that would break decades of precedence for MS. But I suppose I never trusted them in the first place.
It’s strange to me because well, I was a 20+ years windows veteran who managed to never have issues on any of my windows installs prior to the last couple years when the ai thing went full swing. maybe part of that was me, because I was inattentive and reckless, but it really just became too much to ignore. i have a genuinely hard time with the idea of essentially retconning the way things always used to Just Work for me in my Windows days. maybe it was bad when I was there and I just didn’t notice. but blegh.
Yup. He’s lost.
Whole tech world is cooked
It’s a shame
There are some holdouts, here and there. But, they are a tiny minority.
This subject makes me really sad. It makes me want to go for a walk and appreciate the mountains and green grass and flowers and berries. I’m excited for snow, already.
it feels like the industry i used to feel excited for is going head first into enshittification.
The road to hell is paved by good intentions.
I think most people involved just have really shitty moral compasses. A lot of them look the other way to pay the bills, jingle jangle shiny nice life; others probably don’t even see it, rationalizing or even believing that what they’re doing is good; and other still probably genuinely think what they’re doing is good, their knowledge base formed from a place of self-unaware extreme privilege, but effectively exactly the opposite.
Too many people in this world have no concept or deliberation of worldview and morality. Many of them just lost, most of them followers, so few able to make any real change. Humanity is sick and has been fighting itself for eternity. Strife is normal, but this level and type of idiocy is something we are only recently starting to become aware of, helped further along by the very telecommunications that are now under control of the oppressors. We had a glimpse of truth for a while in the internet’s youth. I’d like to see that continue, but the very fact that the oppressors are now the ones POURING ALL of their wealth and influence on it shows us how much of a threat it was. It’s going to take those of us privileged enough to know, to push back ahead with everything we have, and lead society once again.
If we are to gain our freedom from the attractive clutches of the manosphere and fascism and the conservative low-empathy creature ilk, we must systematically disassemble and dismantle their ideas and views with superiority, as with all changes in evolution. I believe truth will prevail, eventually. How much more pain and suffering we all endure, though, is yet to be known, and unlikely to be known by anyone alive today.
Which brings us back to the efficiency equation of sustaining mental health and consolidation of power. This doesn’t have to be a long flight, but it will be, as the powers that be are quite infected with ideas completely opposite to good will, peace, and freedom, and are quite well equipped to continue fighting at this attrition pace.
For you, and anyone else reading this, I implore you to sit alone with your own thoughts more often, and work out why certain things are the way they are. Continue asking why, recursively. Inquire deeply when you see weakness or strength. Seek empathy and real solutions, not immediate blame. For almost all problems are NOT simple, and will take generational time to really solve, and generational wealth to get done. Everything adds up. Plant seeds of good.
Seek community and be good to each other.
And, yeah this is cheesy, but, to quote Peter Capaldi’s Doctor, “Never be cruel”, and “Love is always wise.”
I love hiking and the fresh mountain air in the spring. The quiet, the sun, the breeze, and the views. It reminds me that we are all just visitors here, and one day, every single one of us is going to have to say goodbye and take the forever sleep. Appreciate what you have, but always strive for more.
Think, deliberate, rest, fight, help others, repeat.
It’s okay to fight for what’s right, it’s the right thing to do, even. Don’t let anybody ever convince you otherwise.
Did the headline change? The current headline is Torvalds: “100% of Their Code is Written by Compilers” Too
The title of this post makes for a dumb headline, at any rate. Linus, in response to claims in the industry that projects are now “99% written by AI”, drew an analogy to compilers by saying that all machine code for projects are written by Compilers, yet no one says their project was 100% written by a compiler. It’s just talking about stupid hype, which is valid.
That being said, it’s still quite unfortunate that Linus has fallen into the trap of LLMs.
I don’t get the impression he’s fallen in the trap at all.
More so, he sees it for what it is. It’s a tool that can help, but needs smart people that can validate its output. It can’t design entire systems nor effectively solve real world business problems on its own. It’s not going anywhere, so may as well adapt to our new reality.
Source did change the title if you look at the URL matches what OP posted
AI is the new grifter buzzword 😐
Man I wish he would just shut up.
I hope this new adoption didn’t contributed to recent AMD GPU driver bugs
Pretty unlikely.
The way the kernel devs seem to be using LLMs isn’t really going to lead to any bugs that wound’t have snuck in anyways.
I’m not a tech bro or AI apologist. I’m choosing to skeptically trust Linus in this case. Based on my understanding of how it’s being used, I don’t think we have a lot to worry about.
That being said I wish he would STFU about it because the “Linus is pro-AI now guys” headlines are not doing the world any favors.
Even Linus is conflating “doing more” with “being more productive”. A car factory could, if they wanted, pump 10x more cars out the door. But qualiry would decrease these would be full of defects, so in the end you weren’t more productive
I don’t care if there’s more PRs. It’s just and illusion of productivity
Even Linus is conflating “doing more” with “being more productive”.
No he isn’t:
Torvalds’ broader argument is that generating code has become easy, while maintaining a system over years or decades remains hard — and AI does not close that gap on its own. Without a working understanding of the underlying architecture, he suggested, AI assistance can help someone make mistakes faster rather than build something durable.
Productivity = Doing more things Efficiency = Doing the right things
I wrote a whole thesis on the subject AMA
Wouldnt productivity have two knobs? Efficiency and energy/effort input?
Also efficiency sometimes goes against “right”? If you need resiliancy you then “right” migh include redundancy. In software, that could also be guardrails like memory safety that necissarily take some extra abstraction to implement and a processing penalty?
Efficiency is a bit more about also not doing the wrong things :)
Har du en länk kanske?
Where can I read your thesis?
Haha its “out there” but that would also mean that I need to out myself… Let me have a think on this one. Its also in Swedish but mb not a problem(?)
Depends on what your metric for “production” is. If you’re producing more cars that have to all be recalled and fixed, you’re not making more money than you would had you made higher quality cars from the start, and you then also lose face and your brand is viewed as inferior, so sales drop, and the spiral goes brr.
That doesn’t matter as long as it doesn’t happen in this quarter.
too fuckin’ true
I understand what you’re trying to say, and even agree with it, but the car factory example is just wrong. Those have a design speed that is generally limited by cycle times for individual steps. Like a robot has to place say 10 spot welds. You can’t speed that up. To stick with this example: in theory you could add a robot so both place 5 spots, but that rework takes probably a year and costs millions. Plus you don’t have one bottleneck like this, but a lot of them with similar speed (hence the “design speed” of the whole factory).
You can slow the whole factory down to run under capacity (or not run it during night shift), and then you have room to speed it up. But if you’re running at capacity, there is very little you can do.
It’s physically impossible to speed up the factory to 1.5x, let alone 10x.
Most of these robots are purposely slowed down for human safety and other factors. So I do believe you can speed up a factory a lot, perhaps not10x, but still.
No they aren’t slowed down for “human factors” or safety. They are in cages or behind barricades (at least in Europe). If you open them (like a door or cross a laser barrier), the whole line or at least the cell cell just stops and all of the red lights come on. You can believe what you want, but you can’t speed anything up significantly without massive investment or work. Or they would be running faster, cause money.
Source: I work in the industry and have been in running car plants.
You can just skip a few welds, don’t measure lubricant exactly but do it quickly ±20%, or don’t bother smoothly apply sealant. Reduce time to let paint dry. Don’t bother with exact alignment. Sure, the car might rattle, rust, break in a small accident and the engine doesn’t last long but you’re cranking them out fast.
