How to Write "Garbage Code" (by Linus Torvalds)

2026-05-21

Linus Torvalds, the creator of Git and Linux, says that overly complex or abstracted code, like unnecessary helper functions, makes code maintainability and understanding worse. It increases cognitive burden and, in some cases, it makes sense to repeat code to reduce human and LLM context switching. Code should be optimized for readability and ease of iteration.