Linus Torvalds used Claude Code to build a Linux page cache fix that hit 23x read throughput, but kernel reviewers found a race before anything merged.

They got to him

  • auzy1@lemmy.worldEnglish
    22·
    18 days ago

    You understand it less it sounds like.

    1. Race Conditions are common. This isn’t new to AI. Nobody writes stories about them though unless they lead to security issues (like with XFS, which had one for 10 years and only fixed recently).
    2. There is a lot happening in the kernel, its not always a matter of looking in one tiny location. A race condition is pretty broad and can lead to many things.
    3. Patches get rejected all the time, for reasons including race conditions which are identified.
    4. If you check the post, other developers had tried and failed to fix the same issue. He’s not the only one. It was just yet another failed attempt
    5. Optimisation is HARD, and always has been.
    6. Finally, you say “suggested it for submission”. That code would go to a staging repo first for testing. He wasn’t suggesting pushing it immediately to the main tree…
    7. Standard development tools (at least for my development work) wouldn’t catch race conditions (maybe commercial ones / high end ones would)… AI is actually far better at detecting these things

    This isn’t a unique or interesting story in any capacity… It’s boring and normal