There's no way to say this without sounding mean: Everything Chris Lattner has done has been a "successful mess". He's obviously smart, but a horrible engineer. No one should allow him to design anything.
LLVM: Pretty much everyone who has created a programming language with it has complained about its design. gingerbill, Jon Blow, and Andrew Kelley have all complained about it. LLVM is a good idea, but it that idea was executed better by Ken Thompson with his C compiler for Plan 9, and then again with his Go compiler design. Ken decided to create his own "architecture agnostic" assembly, which is very similar to the IR idea with LLVM.
Swift: I was very excited with the first release of Swift. But it ultimately did not have a very focused vision outlined for it. Because of this, it has morphed into a mess. It tries to be everything for everyone, like C++, and winds up being mediocre, and slow to compile to top it off.
Mojo isn't doesn't exist for the public yet. I hope it turns out to be awesome, but I'm just not going to get my hopes up this time.
Yes. I also written a compiler and I also complained about LLVM.
LLVM is
- Slow to compile
- Breaks compilers/doesn't have a stable ABI
- Optimizes poorly (at least, worse than GCC)
Swift I never used but I tried compiling it once and it was the bottom 2 slowest compiler I ever tested. The only thing nearly as bad was kotlin but 1) I don't actually remember which of these are worse 2) Kotlin wasn't meant to be a CLI compiler, it was meant to compile in the background as a language server so it was designed around that
Mojo... I have things I could say... But I'll stick to this. I talked to engineers there and I asked one how they expected any python developers to use the planned borrow checker. The engineer said "Don't worry about it" ie they didn't have a plan. The nicest thing I can say is they didn't bullshit me 100% of the time when I directly asked a question privately. That's the only nice or neutral thing I could say
> LLVM: Pretty much everyone who has created a programming language with it has complained about its design. gingerbill, Jon Blow, and Andrew Kelley have all complained about it. LLVM is a good idea, but it that idea was executed better by Ken Thompson with his C compiler for Plan 9, and then again with his Go compiler design. Ken decided to create his own "architecture agnostic" assembly, which is very similar to the IR idea with LLVM.
I suggest you ask around to see what the consensus is for which compiler is actually mature. Hint: for all its warts, nobody is writing a seriously optimized language in any of the options you listed besides LLVM.
Chris Lattner is definitely a genius engineer at innovation, implementation and delivery but long-term, robust, maintenable software-design doesn't appear to be in his capability set.
The latter is definitely a defining capability of Anders Hejlsberg. (C#/Typescript designer)
> Everything Chris Lattner has done has been a "successful mess".
I don't have an emotional reaction to this, i.e. I don't think you're being mean, but it is wrong and reductive, which people usually will concisely, and perhaps reductively, describe as "mean".
Why is it wrong?
LLVM is great.
Chris Lattner left Apple a *decade* ago, & thus has ~0 impact or responsibility on Swift interop with C++ today.
Swift is a fun language to write, hence, why they shoehorned it in, in the first place.
Mojo is fine, but I wouldn't really know how you or I would judge it. For me, I'm not super-opinionated on Python, and it doesn't diverge heavily from it afaik.
You don't explain or support your position, you are calling Lattner names. That's not helpful to me or anyone else if we are trying to evaluate his work. Swift has millions of users as does Mojo and Modular in general. These are not trivial accomplishments.
pbohun|11 days ago
LLVM: Pretty much everyone who has created a programming language with it has complained about its design. gingerbill, Jon Blow, and Andrew Kelley have all complained about it. LLVM is a good idea, but it that idea was executed better by Ken Thompson with his C compiler for Plan 9, and then again with his Go compiler design. Ken decided to create his own "architecture agnostic" assembly, which is very similar to the IR idea with LLVM.
Swift: I was very excited with the first release of Swift. But it ultimately did not have a very focused vision outlined for it. Because of this, it has morphed into a mess. It tries to be everything for everyone, like C++, and winds up being mediocre, and slow to compile to top it off.
Mojo isn't doesn't exist for the public yet. I hope it turns out to be awesome, but I'm just not going to get my hopes up this time.
levodelellis|11 days ago
LLVM is
Swift I never used but I tried compiling it once and it was the bottom 2 slowest compiler I ever tested. The only thing nearly as bad was kotlin but 1) I don't actually remember which of these are worse 2) Kotlin wasn't meant to be a CLI compiler, it was meant to compile in the background as a language server so it was designed around thatMojo... I have things I could say... But I'll stick to this. I talked to engineers there and I asked one how they expected any python developers to use the planned borrow checker. The engineer said "Don't worry about it" ie they didn't have a plan. The nicest thing I can say is they didn't bullshit me 100% of the time when I directly asked a question privately. That's the only nice or neutral thing I could say
saagarjha|10 days ago
I suggest you ask around to see what the consensus is for which compiler is actually mature. Hint: for all its warts, nobody is writing a seriously optimized language in any of the options you listed besides LLVM.
jervant|11 days ago
lenkite|10 days ago
The latter is definitely a defining capability of Anders Hejlsberg. (C#/Typescript designer)
refulgentis|11 days ago
I don't have an emotional reaction to this, i.e. I don't think you're being mean, but it is wrong and reductive, which people usually will concisely, and perhaps reductively, describe as "mean".
Why is it wrong?
LLVM is great.
Chris Lattner left Apple a *decade* ago, & thus has ~0 impact or responsibility on Swift interop with C++ today.
Swift is a fun language to write, hence, why they shoehorned it in, in the first place.
Mojo is fine, but I wouldn't really know how you or I would judge it. For me, I'm not super-opinionated on Python, and it doesn't diverge heavily from it afaik.
carefree-bob|11 days ago
bahmboo|11 days ago
satvikpendem|11 days ago
dismalaf|11 days ago
If he's such a horrible engineer then we should have lots of LLVM replacements, right?
pbohun|11 days ago
levodelellis|11 days ago