Ask HN: Are compiler engineers still in demand, and what do they work on? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Are compiler engineers still in demand, and what do they work on?

#41

Post by vips7L » Mon, Jan 20, 2020, 1:14 PM UTC

diN0bot wrote: post #37

choeger wrote: post #8

IMO, you should forget about compiler engineering as working on the backend of, say, gcc, or llvm. Yes, there are such positions (e.g., intel needs people adapting compilers to new processor instruction sets) but they are few and very specialized. Instead, think about languages in general. There is a myriad of opportunities between the js eco system, JVM and .NET, things like Rust and even low-level languages like LL…

minor nit: please use “goto person” if you’d like to keep all readers connected to your writing. (or use “goto woman” to subvert so-called typical practitioner expectations) thank you for considering

Please stop posting things like this.

Re: Ask HN: Are compiler engineers still in demand, and what do they work on?

#42

Post by crispyporkbites » Mon, Jan 20, 2020, 1:15 PM UTC

exdsq wrote: post #40

There's some work happening in the blockchain space because people are starting to create their own smart contract languages. I don't know of any other space seeing so many 'new' languages being created in such a short space. I've seen jobs advertised by teams developing Cardano, Tezos, and Ethereum. It's worth looking at their project pages, seeing which teams work on it, and then checking their careers pages. I kno…

Are these compilers or mere transpilers?

Not sure if I am being sarcastic or serious.

Re: Ask HN: Are compiler engineers still in demand, and what do they work on?

#43

Post by pabs3 » Mon, Jan 20, 2020, 1:18 PM UTC

Google234 wrote: post #6

Intel, IBM, Nvidia, Google, Red Hat, and MSFT are all currently hiring complier engineers. Experience with LLVM is probably useful for many of those opportunities. https://us-redhat.icims.com/jobs/75775/software-engineer---l... https://nvidia.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/NVIDIAExternalCareerSit... https://careers.ibm.com/ShowJob/Id/764855/Software-Developer...

and Igalia are hiring for V8/JavaScriptCore/SpiderMonkey work:

https://www.igalia.com/jobs/javascript_engine_developer

Re: Ask HN: Are compiler engineers still in demand, and what do they work on?

#44

Post by Jhsto » Mon, Jan 20, 2020, 1:26 PM UTC

ltratt wrote: post #14

I lead a PL/VMs/compilers research group and the number of organisations interested in hiring people in this area keeps growing and growing. Now, that's not to say that there are ever going to be hundreds of thousands people working in this field, but it turns out that lots of organisations have realised they have pressing language needs. It varies all the way from those wanting to make mainstream language implementa…

Any comment on the salary in these positions? Are they higher than for the average software developer, and if so, by how much? I am wondering since to my experience, the application and development of logics and verification procedures to be used in programming language development requires vastly different and more rigorous personality and working methods than in your average web developer gig.

Re: Ask HN: Are compiler engineers still in demand, and what do they work on?

#45

Post by jfitzsimons » Mon, Jan 20, 2020, 1:28 PM UTC

We're hiring compiler engineers at Horizon Quantum Computing (http://horizonquantum.com).

Re: Ask HN: Are compiler engineers still in demand, and what do they work on?

#46

Post by samatman » Mon, Jan 20, 2020, 2:02 PM UTC

You should add some contact information to your profile.

And/or get in touch.

Re: Ask HN: Are compiler engineers still in demand, and what do they work on?

#47

Post by samatman » Mon, Jan 20, 2020, 2:04 PM UTC

crispyporkbites wrote: post #42

exdsq wrote: post #40

There's some work happening in the blockchain space because people are starting to create their own smart contract languages. I don't know of any other space seeing so many 'new' languages being created in such a short space. I've seen jobs advertised by teams developing Cardano, Tezos, and Ethereum. It's worth looking at their project pages, seeing which teams work on it, and then checking their careers pages. I kno…

Are these compilers or mere transpilers? Not sure if I am being sarcastic or serious.

This stopped being a useful distinction a long time ago.

Re: Ask HN: Are compiler engineers still in demand, and what do they work on?

#48

Post by samatman » Mon, Jan 20, 2020, 2:05 PM UTC

ghjhkhj wrote: post #36

I'm interested in writing parsers, but my experience is only with small scale web editors for specific type of documents full of business rules e.g user write documents with something like markdown and then editor renders document with things like auto numeration, displaying other referenced elements by syntax e.g '@element2' Does there exist job in writing parsers?

Yes.

Re: Ask HN: Are compiler engineers still in demand, and what do they work on?

#49

Post by exikyut » Mon, Jan 20, 2020, 2:14 PM UTC

randomthrow4w4y wrote: post #17

I work at Oracle Labs where GraalVM (graalvm.org) is being developed. I think this is one of the most exciting places to be right now for compiler engineers, and people with the right skills are certainly in demand. Some things that came out of this: partial escape analysis, the Graal JIT compiler, SubstrateVM, native-image, several Truffle language implementations (JS, Ruby, Python, LLVM), IGV for visualizing differ…

Basic/naive/stupid question that I've been genuinely curious about for a little while now:

What are the real-world motivations behind reimplementing the noted languages on top of Truffle? These projects are frankly incredible - hundreds (thousands) of total man-years of work - and all to _re_build something that already exists. I'm missing context that I don't know where to look for.

Is there anywhere I might look online to immerse myself in the relevant discussion of the business use cases that drive these types of huge projects?

Re: Ask HN: Are compiler engineers still in demand, and what do they work on?

#50

Post by exikyut » Mon, Jan 20, 2020, 2:20 PM UTC

turbinerneiter wrote: post #38

Since there are people in the know here: How would you go in the adjacent field of language design? I would be super interested in doing research on the mental load of different programming languages (and different representations of information). I.e. put a hacker in a fMRI and let her solve tasks in different languages.

This is an interesting idea.

I wonder how many people you'd need to measure to produce a usable stereotype model. (Hmm, I wonder if studies of other types of problem-solving challenges have asked the same question and published any useful data?)

I fear you'd need to parametrically plot developers, experience, and language together to get a useful result.

And then there's the "I get it" threshold point at which the brain suddenly finds a particular subject much easier to reason about, ie, fundamental learning. Everyone's on a spectrum there - one that seems to be very hard to self-assess.