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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 b

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.

ModernMech 1y ago
It makes a lot of sense when you look at how much money they have raised: https://techcrunch.com/2023/08/24/modular-raises-100m-for-ai-dev-tools/ https://techcrunch.com/2023/08/24/modular-raises-100m-for-ai... You don’t raise $130M at a $600M valuation to make boring old dev infrastructure that is sorely needed but won’t generate any revenue because no one is willing to pay for general purpose programming languages in 2025. You raise $130M to be the programming foundation of next Gen AI. VCs wrote some big friggen checks for that pitch.
diggan 1y ago
> The strong AI focus seems to be a sign of the times, and not actually something that makes sense imo. Are you sure about that? I think Mojo was always talked about as "The language for ML/AI", but I'm unsure if Mojo was announced before the current hype-cycle, must be 2-3 years at this point right?
- torginus 1y ago
  According to wikipedia it was announced in May 2023
tomovo 1y ago
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.
- melodyogonna 1y ago
  I think Swift is really successful in that there are so many new Apple developers who would use Swift now but wouldn't have used ObjC.
- davidatbu 1y ago
  Fwiw, Chris has mentioned both of those as lessons he took from Swift that he'd like to avoid for Mojo.
- elpakal 1y ago
  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.
  - drivebycomm 1y ago
    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-issues.html 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.
    - chrislattner 1y ago
      Mojo learns a lot from the mistakes in Swift, including this one. Mojo compiles much faster and doesn't have exponential time type checking! :)
      - slavapestov 1y ago
fnands 1y ago
> The strong AI focus seems to be a sign of the times, and not actually something that makes sense imo. It has been Mojo's explicit goal from the start. It has it's roots in the time that Chris Lattner spent at Google working on the compiler stack for TPUs. It was explicitly designed to by Python-like because that is where (almost) all the ML/AI is happening.

ModernMech 1y ago

It makes a lot of sense when you look at how much money they have raised: https://techcrunch.com/2023/08/24/modular-raises-100m-for-ai-dev-tools/ https://techcrunch.com/2023/08/24/modular-raises-100m-for-ai... You don’t raise $130M at a $600M valuation to make boring old dev infrastructure that is sorely needed but won’t generate any revenue because no one is willing to pay for general purpose programming languages in 2025. You raise $130M to be the programming foundation of next Gen AI. VCs wrote some big friggen checks for that pitch.

diggan 1y ago

> The strong AI focus seems to be a sign of the times, and not actually something that makes sense imo. Are you sure about that? I think Mojo was always talked about as "The language for ML/AI", but I'm unsure if Mojo was announced before the current hype-cycle, must be 2-3 years at this point right?

torginus 1y ago
According to wikipedia it was announced in May 2023

tomovo 1y ago

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.

melodyogonna 1y ago
I think Swift is really successful in that there are so many new Apple developers who would use Swift now but wouldn't have used ObjC.
davidatbu 1y ago
Fwiw, Chris has mentioned both of those as lessons he took from Swift that he'd like to avoid for Mojo.
elpakal 1y ago
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.
- drivebycomm 1y ago
  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-issues.html 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.
  - chrislattner 1y ago
    Mojo learns a lot from the mistakes in Swift, including this one. Mojo compiles much faster and doesn't have exponential time type checking! :)
    - slavapestov 1y ago

fnands 1y ago

> The strong AI focus seems to be a sign of the times, and not actually something that makes sense imo. It has been Mojo's explicit goal from the start. It has it's roots in the time that Chris Lattner spent at Google working on the compiler stack for TPUs. It was explicitly designed to by Python-like because that is where (almost) all the ML/AI is happening.