Linux and Git inventor Linus Torvalds discussed AI in software development in an interview earlier this month, describing himself as “fairly positive” about vibe coding, but as a way into computing, not for production coding where it would likely be horrible to maintain.
Torvalds was interviewed by Dirk Hohndel, head of open source at Verizon, at the Linux Foundation Open Source Summit in Seoul, South Korea, earlier this month.
Torvalds is technical lead and maintainer of the Linux kernel, but said that “for the last almost 20 years, I’ve not been a programmer.” As for Git, which he invented, “I really just look at it from the side.”
I agree with all you said but it’s still a (bad) abstraction.
By and large, the original market for VBScript or Cobol were people who did not have the means to understand - nevermind debug - their own output. Then actual professionals were hired to fix their broken pile of shit.
Vibe coding is arguably worse in many areas (such as determinism), but I’d argue it’s a difference of degree not nature. The idea and target audience are largely the same, and the results will be as well, which is why I am not worried for my job security, quite the contrary.