That seemingly didn't stop the pro- and against-AI camps in the kernel from continuing to bicker, though.
  • starman2112@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    1·
    8 days ago

    This whole situation reminds me of people’s distrust for Big Pharma. Forgetting the actual problem and just assuming everything it produces is evil and will kill you. The problem with big pharma isn’t that modern medicine doesn’t work, it’s that pharmaceutical companies charge so much for it that poor people are condemned to die preventable deaths in the name of profit.

    The problem with AI isn’t that it can’t produce good code, it’s that it’s capable of producing a shitload of bad code at volumes no human can possibly review. It doesn’t surprise me at all that the guy who made Linux can wrangle an AI to produce exceptionally good outcomes. The problem is that there’s a million Joe Normals who are gonna try to replicate it with no idea how to audit the output.

    • Toga77@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      8 days ago

      Fair enough!

      I’ve been vocally against Linus AI advocacy, but I do understand all the points you make here.

      I don’t like that a lot of stupid people will take Torvalds use and embrace of AI as gospel that AI is some be all end all.

      I also LOATH that he is indirectly benefitting fascist corporations that committed the largest theft in human history.

      But the code is good 🤷‍♂️

      To say I am conflicted, is an understatement.

  • keisatsu@infosec.pubEnglish
    0·
    9 days ago

    and in the process he introduced a race condition, a performance regression costing up to 9% when making reads of files around 1 MiB and dumped the responsibility of fixing his mess on co-maintainers and went on vacation.

    • monkeyslikebananas2@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      9 days ago

      Yeah but it sounds like three steps forward half a step back. Also, reviews/testing caught it. Sounds like the system is working. I’ve written quite a few race condition bugs in my 25 year career. That nobody caught until weeks in prod.

      I understand the reluctance of AI but there’s no denying that AI in capable hands can be useful.

      • keisatsu@infosec.pubEnglish
        1·
        9 days ago

        if Linus, who has worked with the language AND the project for decades, can’t find a race condition and a performance regression in his VERY FIRST LLM-assisted commit, then just maybe we should accept that humans are fucking horrible att catching the mistakes that clankers make and stop deluding us into thinking that this is the future of software engineering.

  • rizzothesmall@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    0·
    9 days ago

    Using AI tooling is fine as long as you know what’s being written by it.

    I’m still a massive fan of copilot auto-complete because you’re still laying out the structure of the code and can hint at what you want with strong naming and good doc strings which are good practice anyway, and then the copilot finishes your thoughts and you save time. Especially good at rigging up tests.