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Linus Torvalds let Claude Code fix the Linux page cache. Then reviewers found a race. (thenewstack.io)
submitted 1 month ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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They got to him

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[–] 84 points 1 month ago (13 children)

Linus probably uses AI effectively, but the question is how long until his skill deteriorate because of it.

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  • [–] 83 points 1 month ago (8 children)

    I'd be more concerned with him and people of that generation aging out maintaining the project first, and newer generations not having the skills to begin with to carry it forward.

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  • [–] 25 points 1 month ago (2 children)

    of that generation

    Ouch.

    I think 'we' have about 20 years left in us. That's long enough for an entire new pet language to be born, surge, wane, and then die. ...or 27 entirely new web frameworks.

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  • [–] 9 points 1 month ago* (1 child)

    It's hard to believe he's not also thinking about succession and actively mentoring younger folks. The Linux kernel is his baby and he seems enmeshed enough on the community level. He's smart enough to not simply leave it to chance.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

    I don’t know. People are creative. They’ll get burned and learn from their mistakes. At least, the ones who do will survive in their careers — then pass on the knowledge, repeat. So I imagine Linus will be replaced just fine when he retires. Wait until we’re 2 or 3 generations into using AI for development. It’s not like people are rocks; people don’t tend to just keep sinking.

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  • [–] 13 points 4 weeks ago (2 children)

    Linus hasn't programmed much for years. He is a manager. I imagine lots of managers are seduced by vibe coding. Programming can be a real slog and takes so much time. Why walk when you can drive?

    The problem isn't with Linus losing his skills but sustainability of the entire FOSS space. I don't think many young programmers are ever going to learn the lessons Linus did as a young person and those lessons are still very relevant for low level code working closely with hardware. When the pre-LLM programmers age out I think we are going to be treading water for years with LLM regurgitating variations on the same old human code without much direction or innovation.

    It is arguably a different situation for something like webdev which is mostly paint by numbers or enterprise software that is solving the same problems over and over.

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  • [–] 5 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago)

    Why walk when you can drive?

    Depends on how much you drive. If you do it long enough that you forget how to walk, you'll be stuck when the car runs out of gas. And it's running out of gas.

    Also, are we forgetting how AI was trained? It's a stealing machine.

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