What is the headline implying? That Google engineers are gods? That Google engineers don’t make mistakes?
Also, reading through the code, Linus does have a point. I’m with Linus on this one.
Doesn't bode well for Google.
I’m happy that Linus takes his job seriously and catches such things even under tremendous stress. We are lucky to have him; he once again saved our collective asses from a lot of pain down the road.
The tweet was prejudiced and manipulative. The bottom part of the email was cut off, not revealing additional context. The focus was put on „Google engineer“, which is totally irrelevant. People here in the chat repeat that the developer is „Chair of the UNIX-Class Platform Specification“. So what? Why is this relevant at all? Apparently, even „Chairs of this and that“ still have a lot to learn.
Another point: I have seen many such „helper“ functions when dealing with LLM-generated code. Was this particular code LLM-generated? I don’t know for sure, but it certainly looks that way. So the headline could easily have been „Linus rejects LLM-generated garbage.“
Once again, we are lucky to have Linus, whatever his communication style may be.
spacedcowboy•6mo ago
;)
WCSTombs•6mo ago
pyman•6mo ago
Or maybe he was upset because he expected a lot more from someone who works at Google and has been working on RISC-V since 2019?
I don't know Linus, so I'm not sure what to make of this.
WCSTombs•6mo ago
I read the message again to understand the actual issues being discussed. There are two: (1) the patch came too late in the merge window, and (2) the patch adds an unnecessary and obfuscating helper function. I don't have an opinion on (1), but I think Linus is completely right about (2). Calling it garbage is pretty harsh but not really wrong, so I wouldn't even say it's particularly over-the-top.
> Or maybe he was upset because he expected a lot more from someone who works at Google and has been working on RISC-V since 2019?
I don't know Linus, but I doubt "works at Google" carries much weight, and frankly that's an odd thing to focus on. If I had to guess, he probably read the patch, decided it was garbage, and wrote that in a message, not caring about where it came from. That's what I would have done (except I probably wouldn't have explicitly called it garbage, because I'm not Linus and that's not my style).