r/artificial • u/masiroo • 8h ago

News Linux founder Linus Torvalds says AI is a “gateway drug” into programming — but cautions about using AI for “serious” work

https://tech.yahoo.com/ai/articles/linux-founder-linus-torvalds-says-103004221.html
50 Upvotes

93% Upvoted

17 comments sorted by

17

u/God_Hand_9764 7h ago

I agree with that take. If it's serious work, you better be able to understand every bit of code that it's writing.

But I've been writing tons of bespoke and super useful little programs for myself this past week. It's incredible.

3

u/draw13women 6h ago

I made myself the best Termius/Moba clone thing that fits my workflow and runs locally only with an encrypted vault. I shared with my colleague, he made his suggestions, I added, fed to our local runners, its a private repo on our tiny local hosted Gitea. I will never make it public. Its for us and our stack and we love it.

2

u/draw13women 6h ago

And I do have a BS in compsci so put down the pitchforks

1

u/4r1sco5hootahz 5h ago

I made myself the best Termius/Moba clone thing that fits my workflow and runs locally only with an encrypted vault. I shared with my colleague, he made his suggestions, I added, fed to our local runners, its a private repo on our tiny local hosted Gitea. I will never make it public. Its for us and our stack and we love it.

No one :

And I do have a BS in compsci so put down the pitchforks

Truman show vibes : "what the hell are you talking about? who are you talking to?"

1

u/draw13women 3h ago

Just pre-emptive b4 "you''re a T1 shitfuck producing slop for attention" that goes around this and most of reddit daily. Thats all. You proved my point

2

u/jaybsuave 7h ago

tell this to my founder

1

u/AmandasGameAccount 6h ago

Are you doing serious work? I generally believe 99% of work done is not serious and would only consider medical, financial and security of sensitive data to be “serious”

2

u/cascadiabibliomania 6h ago

There's going to be some real issues when people realize how much of cybersecurity isn't being treated as "serious work" by vendors right now. It's really bonkers.

3

u/AmandasGameAccount 5h ago

Companies will learn the hard way and unfortunately the customers is who will suffer

2

u/drinksoma 7h ago

I made a calendar widget for Android. I'm a clinical psychologist. I couldn't have done it without Codex.

2

u/FigFew2001 5h ago

100%…

I can’t code. I’ve never written anything beyond “Hello, World!” in a couple of languages.

Yet in the last few days, I’ve vibe coded a budgeting app to replace a spreadsheet I use. It’s built around my exact circumstances, which are pretty unique, and it’s been fantastic.

I’ve also vibe coded a Safari userscript to get around an adblock detector on a news site I like. Regular adblocking filters can do the job, but news sites often find ways around them. It’s not foolproof, of course, but it’s working for me.

Would I release either of these projects publicly? Absolutely not. I’m sure the code is bloated and has all sorts of issues. 😂 But they work for my needs, and that’s the point. I’d never have paid a developer to build either of them.

I’m sure I’ll come up with a few more little ideas to build in the near future, too.

I think AI-assisted coding is fantastic when used this way. It lets people solve their own problems and build things they otherwise never would have bothered with, or been able to afford.

1

u/vibrance9460 5h ago

It is a drug. A lot of codebros on here clearly getting a dopamine rush from each subsequent release.

It’s a lot of power

1

u/tweakingforjesus 5h ago

Linus is seriously old-school. Its going to take a while for him to see what is coming.

2

u/sorte_kjele 1h ago

Nah, this is just click baiting and misrepresentation. Torvalds is very much in favour of using agentic AI for development, does it himself, and has been clear that Linux accepts and encourages it - he just expects people to remain accountable for the quality of submissions.

1

u/Positive_Method3022 4h ago

It keeps doing everything you want and it works but when you look at it, it is pure shit. It does not have Artistic View needed for software architecture. It is good as a writer though. Types faster than I could ever.

0

u/strangescript 5h ago

He has a fork of the Linux kernel sitting on this computer doing 3x better performance on multi threaded reads. He used LLMs to build it? You think that isnt making it into mainline??