Why Linus Torvalds Calls Certain Code “Garbage” and What It Means for Cognitive Load

Linus Torvalds harshly criticized a Meta engineer's pull request as garbage, using the incident to illustrate how unnecessary abstractions increase cognitive load, why code should be clear and self‑contained, and how modern tools like IDEs and LLMs change the cost of refactoring.

Linus TorvaldsPR reviewSoftware Engineering

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Why Linus Torvalds Calls Certain Code “Garbage” and What It Means for Cognitive Load