I always assumed that software engineers were naturally curious people who couldn’t wait to try the latest technology. Lately I’m realizing that’s not always true.

I recently asked a developer friend if she had tried Claude Code or Codex, even for a few minutes over a weekend.

“No,” he said proudly. This is an experienced and highly trained software engineer working on large, long-term projects.

It turns out that some tech experts are just as resistant to change as everyone else.

It’s not just her. This is happening within one of the most important software projects in the world.

Linux is the operating system that powers much of the Internet, from cloud computing to smartphones and countless business systems.

It is also a huge open source project, created by thousands of volunteers. Some of these developers want limits on the use of AI to write and review code.

Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, recently closed it completely. AI, he argued, is just another tool, which has become very good at writing and verifying code and finding software bugs.

If people don’t want to use AI, they can do it themselves, Torvalds joked. (I’m here for dad jokes about open source. A fork is when someone copies an existing piece of software and starts developing it separately as their own version.)

“This is NO some kind of ‘social warrior’ project, never has been and never will be,” Torvalds wrote on a Linux mailing list. “We make decisions based primarily on technical merit. There is no fear of new tools.”

A year ago, it wasn’t clear whether AI would be as useful, but that’s no longer in doubt, he said.

Torvalds admitted that AI can be “painful” to use at times, in part because it keeps finding errors in human-written software code, which can be embarrassing for software engineers.

“But the solution is not to stick your head in the sand and sing ‘La La
La, I can’t hear you at the top of your lungs like some people seem to
do,” he wrote.

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