Who: Stephen Hemminger
What: AI: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Where: 1930 SW 4th Avenue, Portland, Oregon 97201-5304, Room 86-01
When: Thursday, March 5, 2026 at 7 PM
Why: The pursuit of technology freedom
Summary:
AI coding assistants are everywhere now, but how well do they actually
work for open source? This talk shares lessons from using AI on two
Linux networking projects: DPDK and iproute2.
The good: documentation, test writing, and debugging. The bad: awkward
code suggestions, formatting errors, and false positives in code
reviews. The ugly: trying to get AI to write new features like RSTP or
FQ-CoDel — after too many failed attempts, I gave up and moved on to
more useful things.
A frank look at where AI helps, where it wastes your time, and what to
watch out for.
Bio:
Stephen Hemminger is a longtime Linux kernel networking developer,
maintainer of iproute2, and contributor to DPDK. Now retired, he
continues contributing to open source as a volunteer.
Calagator: https://calagator.org/events/1250482469
With luck, the talk will also be streamed live here:
http://www.twitch.tv/kngbwlf, and later posted to YouTube.
PLUG is back at Portland State University, thanks to the Computer
Science Department and to Andrew Greenberg. The room is in the basement
of the PSU Engineering Building (also connected underground to the
Fourth Avenue Building, or FAB). Enter through the Engineering Building.
The outside door will be locked, but there should be someone present at
the entrance to let you in starting at 6:40pm until 7pm. There will be a
sign on the door with a phone number you can SMS if there isn't someone
there to let you in immediately.
--
Russell Senior
PLUG Volunteer
[email protected]
