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The entire Linux kernel is about 40 million LoC, and only something like 16 million LoC after you remove drivers. I have a hard time imagining whatever OpenAI w

The entire Linux kernel is about 40 million LoC, and only something like 16 million LoC after you remove drivers. I have a hard time imagining whatever OpenAI was talking about there having anywhere close to 6% as much utility as the Linux kernel, despite having 6% as many lines of code. And I have a hard time imagining it's anywhere close to maintainable, regardless of how powerful their LLMs might be.

esperent 3mo ago
To be fair, few things of any number of LOC have as much utility as the Linux kernel, and it's also a particularly dense example of code. There's plenty of other examples that have higher LOC / utility ratio without being vibe coded. For example, Google's monorepo famously has 2 billion LOC, which is a statistic I've heard long before LLM coding took over.
- jeffbee 3mo ago
  Clarification: Google claimed to have 2 billion lines of code in their repo ten years ago, and a commit rate of 50,000 changelists per day, both on exponential growth trends.
  - zaphar 3mo ago
    That's a monorepo with hundreds if not thousands of different applications. It's not even close to an apples to apples comparison.
    - jeffbee 3mo ago
      That's certainly a way to look at it. And that repo contains a "third party" directory which itself contains Linux, LLVM, and much of the rest of the open source world. But I would suggest that the largest of those thousands of applications probably has a transitive closure of hundreds of millions of lines of code.
      - zaphar 3mo ago
        I'm aware. I worked on that specific project (assuming we are talking about the same one) back in the day. :-) There are certainly very large applications in that repo in the hundreds of millions of lines of code. But comparing the entire repo to single applications is not an apt comparison.
        esperent 3mo ago
        Ok, then we can still compare one of those very large applications that have hundreds of millions of lines.
dist-epoch 3mo ago
Chrome has 50 mil LoC https://openhub.net/p/chrome/analyses/latest/languages_summary https://openhub.net/p/chrome/analyses/latest/languages_summa...
- skydhash 3mo ago
  Chrome is basically reinventing each OS API and libraries. One day they’ll have their own tcp stack and packet filter.
  - getnormality 3mo ago
    It kinda makes sense given that one of their major products is a computer that runs an operating system literally called ChromeOS.
  - jeffbee 3mo ago
    Arguably with QUIC it already does.
  - robotresearcher 3mo ago
    Chrome still has a way to go until Zawinski's Law is satisfied natively. http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/Z/Zawinskis-Law.html http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/Z/Zawinskis-Law.html
strulovich 3mo ago
The Linux kernel is not in any way at top of big projects. A kernel, as the name suggests, deals with specific issues and tries to remain small. The world’s biggest software is usually built over endless adapters of different data and a need to reconcile endless edge cases with laws, regulations and real world complexities.
m463 3mo ago
When I was young, I remember a (joke) program from a book or magazine, called something like report writer or something. It was written in basic and you typed it in. You would run it and it would say: how many pages? _ You would type in a number, and it would generate that many pages of a complex-sounding report. something like "the subsystem design interface is ..." blah blah similar?

esperent 3mo ago

To be fair, few things of any number of LOC have as much utility as the Linux kernel, and it's also a particularly dense example of code. There's plenty of other examples that have higher LOC / utility ratio without being vibe coded. For example, Google's monorepo famously has 2 billion LOC, which is a statistic I've heard long before LLM coding took over.

jeffbee 3mo ago
Clarification: Google claimed to have 2 billion lines of code in their repo ten years ago, and a commit rate of 50,000 changelists per day, both on exponential growth trends.
- zaphar 3mo ago
  That's a monorepo with hundreds if not thousands of different applications. It's not even close to an apples to apples comparison.
  - jeffbee 3mo ago
    That's certainly a way to look at it. And that repo contains a "third party" directory which itself contains Linux, LLVM, and much of the rest of the open source world. But I would suggest that the largest of those thousands of applications probably has a transitive closure of hundreds of millions of lines of code.
    - zaphar 3mo ago
      I'm aware. I worked on that specific project (assuming we are talking about the same one) back in the day. :-) There are certainly very large applications in that repo in the hundreds of millions of lines of code. But comparing the entire repo to single applications is not an apt comparison.
      - esperent 3mo ago
        Ok, then we can still compare one of those very large applications that have hundreds of millions of lines.

dist-epoch 3mo ago

Chrome has 50 mil LoC https://openhub.net/p/chrome/analyses/latest/languages_summary https://openhub.net/p/chrome/analyses/latest/languages_summa...

skydhash 3mo ago
Chrome is basically reinventing each OS API and libraries. One day they’ll have their own tcp stack and packet filter.
- getnormality 3mo ago
  It kinda makes sense given that one of their major products is a computer that runs an operating system literally called ChromeOS.
- jeffbee 3mo ago
  Arguably with QUIC it already does.
- robotresearcher 3mo ago
  Chrome still has a way to go until Zawinski's Law is satisfied natively. http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/Z/Zawinskis-Law.html http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/Z/Zawinskis-Law.html

strulovich 3mo ago

The Linux kernel is not in any way at top of big projects. A kernel, as the name suggests, deals with specific issues and tries to remain small. The world’s biggest software is usually built over endless adapters of different data and a need to reconcile endless edge cases with laws, regulations and real world complexities.

m463 3mo ago

When I was young, I remember a (joke) program from a book or magazine, called something like report writer or something. It was written in basic and you typed it in. You would run it and it would say: how many pages? _ You would type in a number, and it would generate that many pages of a complex-sounding report. something like "the subsystem design interface is ..." blah blah similar?