Linus On LLMs For Coding

The I in LLM stands for intelligence.

Being hard on code and neutral on LLMs is not a contradiction. If someone submits terrible code it doesnt matter if they used AI or not, if they submit good code it also doesnt matter. The point is that you judge code on the merit of the code, not the source. Its honestly really strange to try so hard to apply a moral or even value judgement to something which is just an inanimate tool that can be used or misused.

Re: LLMs - you should read/review the recent paper on LLMs and learning outcomes for students. They basically found that although LLMs helped students improve *while* they had access to them the overall learning outcomes were poorer when access was taken away vs when access was never provided. Basically students who learned with LLMs became poorer at learning things in general or at least didn't improve at learning things compared to their peers who didn't use LLMs.

I think Linus is ambivalent or neutral about LLM coding because he doesn't direct his anger towards unconscious, inanimate agents. What he gets upset about is when a human, who should know better, tries to merge garbage code generated by an LLM without understanding what they are attempting to merge.

Linus goes off on developers cutting corners and breaking rules. Not respecting how important the kernel is.

The reason he's so chill about LLMs is because he trusts his review process. He nitpicks everything and takes it seriously. Therefore it doesn't matter if the code came from LLM or from a human, it would still need to go through him or his trusted review body.

"LLMs are great if you don't sacrifice your own understanding."

AI for coding is (currently) basically a replacement for Stack Overflow and Google If you just plug in AI generated code into your system, you're gonna have problems, just like you would if you copy code from SO as-is If you consult the AI, learn from it, and review what it produces and how it stacks up to your needs, then it becomes a net positive force that can both help your with trivial boring tasks, and also teach you things

Dude! The thumbnail looked like you interviewed him! I was so exicted!

Linus had a valium this morning