Linux and Git creator Linus Torvalds’ latest project contains code that was “basically written by vibe coding,” but you shouldn’t read that to mean that Torvalds is embracing that approach for anything and everything.
Torvalds sometimes works on a small hobby projects over holiday breaks. Last year, he made guitar pedals. This year, he did some work on AudioNoise, which he calls “another silly guitar-pedal-related repo.” It creates random digital audio effects.
Torvalds revealed that he had used an AI coding tool in the README for the repo:
Also note that the python visualizer tool has been basically written by vibe-coding. I know more about analog filters—and that’s not saying much—than I do about python. It started out as my typical “google and do the monkey-see-monkey-do” kind of programming, but then I cut out the middle-man—me—and just used Google Antigravity to do the audio sample visualizer.
Google’s Antigravity is a fork of the AI-focused IDE Windsurf. He didn’t specify which model he used, but using Antigravity suggests (but does not prove) that it was some version of Google’s Gemini.
Torvalds’ past public comments on using large language model-based tools for programming have been more nuanced than many online discussions about it.
He has touted AI primarily as “a tool to help maintain code, including automated patch checking and code review,” citing examples of tools that found problems he had missed.
On the other hand, he has also said he is generally “much less interested in AI for writing code,” and has publicly said that he’s not anti-AI in principle, but he’s very much anti-hype around AI.
Based on that, you might be surprised that he used self-described vibe coding to build a part of his application, but you probably shouldn’t be. There are a few key things here. First, AudioNoise is entirely a personal hobby project, and it’s pretty much just a toy, not serious infrastructure.
Second, Torvalds’ README note makes it clear that he went with this approach in an instance where he previously would have just copied something from a forum thread or StackOverflow anyway, as the visualizer tool component in the project is written in Python, which is not his specialty.
Developers of all stripes are still fiercely debating what use (if any) AI coding tools should have in workflows. Just yesterday, developer Salvatore Sanfilippo published a widely circulated and discussed blog post arguing that such tools have already changed programming forever and aren’t going away, even as he acknowledged the related chaos and problems. He wrote:
How do I feel, about all the code I wrote that was ingested by LLMs? I feel great to be part of that, because I see this as a continuation of what I tried to do all my life: democratizing code, systems, knowledge. LLMs are going to help us to write better software, faster, and will allow small teams to have a chance to compete with bigger companies. The same thing open source software did in the 90s.
As you might expect, the debate about this has been spirited. But while people argue in Hacker News comments, Torvalds—normally known to be intensely opinionated himself—is vibe coding audio tools over the holidays.
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