Today Linus Torvalds told a Google engineer that his code is garbage

6 pyman 9 8/9/2025, 9:46:05 PM twitter.com ↗

Comments (9)

Bowes-Lyon · 3h ago
I strongly dislike the spin of the headline – „Linus told a Google engineer that…” as opposed to „Linus told a developer that…”.

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.

pyman · 2h ago
It's the first sentence of the tweet. The engineer Linus emailed is also the Chair of the UNIX-Class Platform Specification. Anyway, the point is to discuss why Linus thinks his code is garbage, not the tweet's title.
ncruces · 3h ago
He's not wrong, though, certainly not in the example he gave.
pyman · 2h ago
Yeah, but what's really going on here? Palmer is the Chair of the UNIX Class Platform Specification and has apparently been working on a RISC-V spec since 2019.
tuatoru · 3h ago
Interesting that this is worthy of comment. The inference I draw from the use of the words "Google engineer" is that Google and/or the tweeter now have a culture of deferring to authority, the job title, not measuring merit.

Doesn't bode well for Google.

d00mB0t · 4h ago
He's right btw, it was garbage.
spacedcowboy · 4h ago
This is the kinder, more empathetic and approachable Linus, right ?

;)

WCSTombs · 4h ago
Yes, and I'm not being ironic. The earlier Linus would have called the coder garbage, where here he's only insulting the code. I cannot emphasize how big of an improvement that is.
pyman · 2h ago
Do you think the way he reviews PRs sets a bad example for engineers who've just graduated and look up to him? I mean, there are different ways to reject a PR, even if the code is garbage.

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.