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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: 0.002s | source
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torginus ◴[05 Sep 25 12:35 UTC] No.45137794[source]▶
I think Mojo's cool and there's definitely a place for a modern applications programming language with C++ class(ish) performance, aka what Swift wanted to be but got trapped in the Apple ecosystem (designed by the same person as Mojo).

The strong AI focus seems to be a sign of the times, and not actually something that makes sense imo.

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tomovo ◴[05 Sep 25 12:54 UTC] No.45137960[source]▶
While I appreciate all his work on LLVM, Chris Lattner's Swift didn't work out so well for me, so I'm cautious about this.

Swift has some nice features. However, the super slow compilation times and cryptic error messages really erase any gains in productivity for me.

- "The compiler is unable to type-check this expression in reasonable time?" On an M3 Pro? What the hell!?

- To find an error in SwiftUI code I sometimes need to comment everything out block by block to narrow it down and find the culprit. We're getting laughs from Kotlin devs.

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elpakal ◴[05 Sep 25 13:47 UTC] No.45138539[source]▶
To be fair to Chris, I’ve only seen the message about compiler not being able to type check the expression in swiftui closure hell. I think he left (maybe partly) because of the SwiftUI influence on Swift.
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drivebycomm ◴[05 Sep 25 19:07 UTC] No.45142387{3}[source]▶
Actually, even very basic code can cause it. The type system of Swift has issues.

https://www.cocoawithlove.com/blog/2016/07/12/type-checker-i...

let a: Double = -(1 + 2) + -(3 + 4) + -(5)

Still fails on a very recent version of Swift, Swift 6.1.2, if my test works.

Chris Lattner mentions something about him being more of an engineer than a mathematician, but a responsible and competent computer science engineer that is designing programming languages with complex type systems, absolutely has to at least be proficient in university-level mathematics and relevant theory, or delegate out and get computer scientists to find and triple-check any relevant aspects of the budding programing language.

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1. valleyer ◴[06 Sep 25 02:02 UTC] No.45145925{4}[source]▶
That last paragraph (the personal attack) is completely needless.
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2. drivebycomm ◴[06 Sep 25 04:21 UTC] No.45146586[source]▶
Not a personal attack, and the post is completely valid, but it won't bother me much if you succeed in having my posts censored, as Hacker News (and Western media in general) often censors many people's posts for a variety of purposes, some deeply and completely immoral and corrupt, for this was a drive-by comment from a temporary account.

That programming language designers have to be careful about a type system and its type checking's asymptotic time complexity was 100% widely known before Swift was first created. Some people like to diss on mathematics, but this stuff can have severe practical and widespread engineering consequences. I don't expect everyone to master everything, but budding programming language designers should then at least realize that there may be important issues, and for instance mitigate any issues with having one or more experts checking the relevant aspects.