16 ms·
Welcome Chris Lattner
- akellermann 10y agoOhhh drama
- alpb 10y agoObviously, also related from the home page right now: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13366542 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13366542
- mozumder 10y agoDid not see that coming...
- megablast 10y agoI hate it when big companies buy other, smaller entities, and hope they don't interfere and change them too much. But seriously, exciting news for Tesla.
- mikeash 10y agoThis is just a normal hire, no different than thousands of others that happen every day aside from being a fairly high position in the company and being someone well known in the tech community.
- carlosdp 10y agoWhat? What small entity are you referring to?
- eliben 10y agoSome apple vendor, probably
- up_so_floating 10y agoChris Lattner, personally
- drdrey 10y agoare you a bot?
- carlosdp 10y agoWow, that was unexpected. Great hire by Tesla. Interesting move from compiler development to driving AI, though I guess for the VP position, his experience in managing those teams is much more important.
- chimeracoder 10y ago> Wow, that was unexpected. Great poach by Tesla. Tangential, but I really hate the term "poach" when referring to recruiting employees. We shouldn't think of hiring people as "poaching", because employees are not property. You can't "poach" an employee because there's no ownership, and employees should be free to make their own decisions regarding their employment opportunities.
- forgotpwtomain 10y agoI'm not sure why OP was down-voted, you may disagree but his post was credible and merits a response.
- gkya 10y agoI downvoted most of the subthread as it was completely off-topic. I didn't come here to read this garbage.
- carlosdp 10y agoYea, I mean that's a good point, it is kinda a weird term. I don't mind changing it I guess.
- draw_down 10y agoI agree, it's a distasteful term. People choose jobs according to what's best for them and "poaching" implies the employer's interests should matter more than that.
- ianai 10y agoi.e. it's an business management term.
- freshyill 10y agoWell, mystery solved. Now, the new mystery: What does this mean for Apple's car project? Yes, I realize he probably didn't have much (or anything) to do with it (whatever it really even is). There are going to be some batshit crazy theories though, and I can't wait to see how this affects Apple's stock price.
- carlosdp 10y agoCould be that rumors are true and they stopped the car project. Could also be that Apple's extreme compartmentalization came into play and Chris wasn't privy to that team and therefore couldn't really express interest in it. Could also be that they already have a full staff and didn't really have a spot for him or feel he was a good fit. I don't think we can derive much about their project from this hire tbh.
- bredren 10y agoCar is clearly a bet-the-company level product for Apple. Tesla looking more and more like a bet-the-company acquisition.
- kornish 10y agoHow is Apple Car clearly a bet-the-company level product for Apple? It could just be Apple's normal secrecy, but as far as I know that project isn't generally well-known enough to be mentioned in the same pantheon as Google or Tesla.
- vehementi 10y agoHow many billions does it cost to experiment with Car? How many billions does apple have sitting in cash?
- mtgx 10y agoSpending $10 billion on the car project would not be "betting the company" level of investment for Apple. That's "let's acquire a Motorola" level of investment. Plus, I think the latest rumors say Apple has given up on making a car anyway, and it's working on a Waymo competitor of sorts.
- NKosmatos 10y agoAnother example of why Apple is going downhill... Macbook with less ports, copy&paste iPhone with no originality, imac/macpro with old CPUs :-(
- shadowfacts 10y agoLattner had nothing to do with any of the things you listed.
- jlarocco 10y agoThe reading comprehension on HN is pretty bad lately. OP didn't say Lattner had anything to do with those examples. The point is that Apple's been dropping the ball a lot lately. Lattner leaving is either another example of that (why didn't they make him a better offer to keep him?) or a consequence of it (what smart person wants to work for a company that's constantly screwing up?).
- coldtea 10y ago>The point is that Apple's been dropping the ball a lot lately. They might, but the examples for that are bad themselves: >Macbook with less ports Which has always been something Apple pushed for. Dropping deprecated ports early (to complains) and adopting new ones. Few doubt USB-C is the future, even if they complain about the dongles. >copy&paste iPhone with no originality The iPhone, like the iPod before it, had always had incremental updates. What originality exactly should it had at it's 10th year? Magic pixie dust spray? Can you point to some competitor doing anything original? Besides, while everyone is always about how "Apple is all about style and no substance", nobody pays attentions to the large internal changes inside the iPhone year over year, with new processors, boards, camera setups and other internals designed by Apple. Processors, than, in all tests, leave the competitive top-end Android phones behind in single/multi core performance. >imac/macpro with old CPUs :-( Intel announced Kaby Lake CPUs suitable for the iMac just last week (Jan 03). Mac Pro, yes, but it's probably a duying niche product.
- 10y ago
- eddanger 10y agoThis is very exciting for the future of Autopilot. I thought it was amazing already. I can't wait to see what they have in store.
- DoodleBuggy 10y agoI guess CarPlay or "Project Titan" just wasn't as interesting?
- jaegerpicker 10y agoSo I kinda what to be Chris Lattner when I grow up. :) LLVM, Swift, and Autopiloting cars is a hell of a run.
- n00b101 10y agoChris Lattner : Tesla :: Bjarne Stroustrup : Morgan Stanley [1] [1] http://www.morganstanley.com/profiles/bjarne-stroustrup-managing-director-technology http://www.morganstanley.com/profiles/bjarne-stroustrup-mana...
- ajeet_dhaliwal 10y agoI'm surprised Stroustrup is working at Morgan Stanley.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- pjmlp 10y agoFinance is one area where C++ still rules as full stack language. In the typical enterprise, whose domain isn't selling software products, C++ tends to be mostly used as infrastructure language for .NET/Java/JS native libraries or interacting with their runtime APIs.
- ajeet_dhaliwal 10y agoI work in the games industry and C++ is used for almost all system code (not tools) but this still feels like Shigeru Miyamoto taking a gig at a toy shop or Spielberg working at Universal Studios amusement park.
- xigency 10y agoYou know, Google seems to attract a lot influential technologists that don't necessarily have a role in their organization. I guess it makes sense that other companies do this as well.
- salimmadjd 10y agoI've met Chris and he is one of the nicest and humblest guy you can imagine. I'm not betting on him lasting in Tesla for more than 12 months. I think there will be a cultural conflict.
- Etzos 10y agoCould you explain why you think there will be a cultural conflict? Do Tesla engineers typically act in ways counter to being nice and humble?
- _1 10y agoIt's more like the person above than the people below.
- pseudometa 10y agoChris did work under the leadership of Steve Jobs for 5 years.
- scott_karana 10y agoHe worked under Jobs as a direct report, like a VP role is?! I had the impression he wasn't that high in the totem pole before Jobs died...
- RivieraKid 10y agoThose two personality types can work fine actually, I think. Two egoistic-ish people working together is much more likely to be problematic.
- bangonkeyboard 10y agoWas there a cultural conflict for the myriad other ex-Apple employees at Tesla?
- coldtea 10y ago
- camus2 10y agoThat was quick! Congrats.
- gtrubetskoy 10y agoThere's got to be more to this story. You don't spend years developing a language (Swift) as culmination of previous work (LLVM) and then abandon it for a job in a relatively new and different discipline. It doesn't make much sense to me.
- lawnchair_larry 10y agoThere is, it's called seven figures worth of reasons.
- zump 10y agoI wonder what his salary is.
- lawnchair_larry 10y agoSalary will be modest, but the bulk of his comp will be stock and bonuses for sure.
- zump 10y ago10 mil/yr?
- Benjamin_Dobell 10y agoI think you'll find that it's extremely unusual for modern software developers to remain at the one company doing the one job for a long time. Given it's largely a field for intellectuals, sticking at the one thing for a long time can become repetitive and boring; losing the challenge and the appeal.
- adamnemecek 10y agoHe has a track record of being able to scale engineering organizations in open source and corporate environments.
- 10y ago
- mrkd 10y agoElon Musk is the new Steve Jobs. He is an inspirational leader and talented people want to work with him. It appears it will be harder and harder to attract and keep talent at Apple with out a leader like Steve Jobs.
- bitwize 10y agoI see Musk as more of a Bushnell/Woz hybrid. He knows his shit technically, which is why good people want to work with him. Jobs knew how to delegate knowing his technical shit to others though.
- yardie 10y agoJobs wrote the Atari game brick breaker. So like Gates, Zuckerberg, and Musk he does have a technical background.
- valleyer 10y agoAs the story goes, Wozniak was actually the primary (or maybe even sole?) implementer on that project: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakout_(video_game)#History_and_development https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakout_(video_game)#History_...
- yincrash 10y agoNot really. He was contracted to do it, but subbed all the actual engineering work to Wozniak then essentially lied to Wozniak about how much that work was worth.[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakout_(video_game)#History_and_development https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakout_(video_game)#History_...
- yardie 10y agoMy mistake. I was under the impression it was another game, asteroids.
- tyingq 10y ago
- gigatexal 10y agoWow! My faith in autopilot just increased.
- kelvin0 10y agoYeah, I would work for Tesla in a heartbeat (or SpaceX, or Solar City or any of the Mega Factories). Well it's back to Access programming for me ... :(
- abalone 10y agoWhat's really interesting about this is not just that Lattner is brilliant and liked, but that is highlights just how critical software correctness and reliability is to autonomous vehicles. Naively one might have expected some machine learning expert to take over the reins at Tesla. But fast-moving Silicon Valley needs a fundamental shift in quality standards when it comes to safety-critical software, and if you look closely, Lattner has been leading this charge at the language and compiler level. His work has been distinguished by the melding of language safety, reliability and clarity, that is, not merely having sophisticated constructs that help the guarantee correctness, but also making code simple, beautiful and easy to read. Ultimately writing safe code depends on the ability of the programmer to comprehend it, so creating a programming environment that's successful on all fronts is a foundational achievement. A notable example: LLVM enabled ARC, a beautifully simple approach to memory management that removed much (not all) of the need for the developer to implement details in code, while providing high efficiency and, perhaps even more importantly, predictable performance (no garbage collection pauses). These are all essential for safety-critical realtime software.
- Cyph0n 10y agoThat's not very surprising honestly. ML/AI algorithms alone are useless if they are written incorrectly or are not executed properly by the underlying OS/firmware.
- tma-1 10y agoWell considering that most of the autopilot software is driven by black box deep neural networks, I don't think hiring someone with a strong coding background is going to make that much of a difference when it comes to safety.
- tawaycozstoned 10y agoSure it is. NNs can behave non-deterministic (i.e. they produce different output for same input because AFAIK some operations on GPUs are undeterministic) and it makes sense to invest into software systems that clearly take a closer look on software correctness. One idea to get correcter code is clean code layout (I heard good things about the LLVM code base), simple to read code and compilers that exploit theoretical knowledge we gained over years of compiler and type theory research. I think Chris Lattner has expertise in all of them (or at least knows about their importance, contributions and drawbacks), and if want to build a full-blown self-driving car it is important to have no indeterminism in your car, and advanced languages and compilers help to guarantee specific statements about your code. So it absolutely makes sense to invest in your compiler research team for safety, as our security, reliability and correctness expectations will rise (which is good) in particular for self-driving cars (they are not just DNNs).
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- shmerl 10y agoWhat languages are used by Tesla for developing autopilot software?
- ChuckMcM 10y agoWay to go Chris! It has to be pretty awesome when the CEO tweets and blogs that you're joining the team. No pressure!
- dbg31415 10y agoTop two stories right now are about people leaving Apple... I don't think that bodes well for Apple.
- Scuds 10y agoCongrats from us CS @ UIUC peeps!
- sudeepj 10y agoBeing a Rust-lang fan, I would have loved to see him join the rust-lang group (which I am not a part of). I thought there might be a chance of this after I saw the post of him leaving Apple.
- naaaaak 10y agoApple has a car project. Autopilot must be one of its core features. But Apple would not create a VP-level position for Autopilot or any one feature for any of their products (even if they it called something else for secrecy/generalization reasons). This move increases his compensation and clout. Post-Tesla, he'll only have VP or founder titles elsewhere, never anything lower-level (unless he gets his old job back). The change must be welcoming, too. That Apple could not retain him speaks volumes of the company they've become. They're a conglomerate at the intersection of tech and fashion. Groundbreaking engineering is not always given its proper due (or compensation) because there's only so many seats at the table. They've become rigidly corporate and not particularly inspiring. Good luck to him, and good job taking a chance. Working for someone with a vision other than "thin" must be a welcoming change.
- laser 10y agoI thought Apple's car project was dead? Now autopilot is the one feature they're building? http://www.motortrend.com/news/apple-car-dead-software-shift-report/ http://www.motortrend.com/news/apple-car-dead-software-shift...
- tajen 10y agoBoth are correct: Apple's car project is dead, Apple is on autopilot.
- will_pseudonym 10y ago> Working for someone with a vision other than "thin" must be a welcoming change. This is so spot on. I would kill for a thicker phone with a less vibrant display that would last 2x as long on a single charge. They're pushing stuff that the consumer doesn't want (thinner/less battery volume, no headphone jack) in order to make money. It reminds me a lot of the TV industry pushing 3D TV's. I don't know a single person who has ever watched, let alone regularly, any 3D content on their 3D TV. It's a technology that few wanted but was pushed to drive sales.
- jolux 10y ago
- reacharavindh 10y agoInteresting twist : Apple buys Tesla and elevates Elon to the missing role of Steve Jobs. Wouldn't it be nice...
- withparadox2 10y agoI doubt that this is a right decision.
- tgtweak 10y agoCare to elaborate?
- igorigor 10y agoLLVM + GPU
- twsted 10y agoYesterday reading "Update on the Swift Project Lead" I was going to comment "He will go to Tesla". Pure lucky, but my reasoning was that it is difficult for a compiler (etc) engineer like him to find a better job than the one he was doing at Apple: developers' tools, compiler infrastructure, a new programming language, Coding playground and so on.
- zubairq 10y agoI always liked that Chris Lattner pubicly acknowledged Light Table as the inspiration for SWIFT Playgrounds: http://www.nondot.org/sabre/ http://www.nondot.org/sabre/ Now, of course their new project is Eve
- yborg 10y agoMaybe Tesla is the Apple Graveyard now. http://venturebeat.com/2015/10/08/elon-musk-if-you-dont-make-it-at-tesla-you-go-work-at-apple/ http://venturebeat.com/2015/10/08/elon-musk-if-you-dont-make...
- 72deluxe 10y agoArgh who's in charge of Xcode and Swift at Apple now????
- tbrock 10y agoGood for him. This is awful though. People can't really think spending time on autopilot for rich people sports cars is more important than the LLVM compiler infrastructure. Give me a break! Even if tesla invents cool new batteries and changes the way we think about power all of that stuff still has to run on software, that the compiler infrastructure depends on...
- grzm 10y agoDeveloping a system that can handle a complex, variable, real-world environment like driving surely has applications in other domains. LLVM and Swift are great contributions, and make development easier. That said, I don't see them changing software development as significantly as the possibilities opened up by systems like Tesla's autopilot.
- gmosx 10y agoIt's quite interesting that there is no public comment from any other member of the Swift Core Team.
- breatheoften 10y ago(wish) Maybe he's being hired to make enhancements to swift/llvm for numerically intensive computation? It would be awesome to see a pure-swift version of something like tensor-flow and all the compiler machinery to make it fast!
- zanko 10y agoRecording the conversation and filmed