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ML needs a new programming language – Interview with Chris Lattner

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311 points melodyogonna | 2 comments | 05 Sep 25 11:33 UTC | HN request time: 0.398s | source
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frou_dh ◴[05 Sep 25 13:45 UTC] No.45138511[source]▶
Listening to this episode, I was quite surprised to hear that even now in Sept 2025, support for classes at all is considered a medium-term goal. The "superset of Python" angle was thrown around a lot in earlier discussions of Mojo 1-2 years ago, but at this rate of progress seems a bit of a pie-in-the-sky aspiration?
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adgjlsfhk1 ◴[05 Sep 25 14:16 UTC] No.45138883[source]▶
superset of Python was never a goal. It was a talking point to try and build momentum that was quietly dropped once it served it's purpose of getting Mojo some early attention.
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ModernMech ◴[05 Sep 25 18:36 UTC] No.45142030[source]▶
I hope that’s not what it was, that makes them seem very manipulative and dishonest. I was under the impression it was a goal, but they dropped it when it became apparent it was too hard. That’s much more reasonable to understand.
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adgjlsfhk1 ◴[05 Sep 25 20:02 UTC] No.45142973[source]▶
I'd agree with you if Mojo was a project by an inexperienced team, but it wasn't. Chris Latner alone has decades of PL experience and the issues with making Python fast are fundamental and well known. anyone who comes around with a sales pitch for making a portion implementation that's significantly faster than Pypy is either incredibly naive or lying
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1. ModernMech ◴[05 Sep 25 20:28 UTC] No.45143247[source]▶
For me, it’s because Chris is part of the team I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. I will assume ego-driven naïveté over malice. It’s not unheard of.
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2. chrislattner ◴[06 Sep 25 00:52 UTC] No.45145513[source]▶
Thank you, that's not entirely wrongbut not the full picture. Our initial explanation had two problems actually,

1) we were "ambitiously optimistic" (different way of saying "ego-driven naïveté" perhaps :) ) and 2) the internet misread our long-term ambitions as being short-term goals.

We've learned that the world really really wants a better Python and the general attention spans of clickbait are very short - we've intentionally dialed back to very conservative claims to avoid the perception of us overselling.

We're still just as ambitious though!

-Chris