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Mojo – a new programming language for AI developers

modular.com

71–80 of 272 posts

Re: Mojo – a new programming language for AI developers

#71
post #42

Is this closed source? I just assumed that a new programming language would be open source but I don't see any links to GitHub or any other place. The getting started page also requires you to put in your name and contact information.

This is exactly what I was trying to figure out. It seems like the answer is no at this time.

From their FAQ https://docs.modular.com/mojo/faq.html

"Will Mojo be open-sourced?

Yes, we expect that Mojo will be open-sourced. However, Mojo is still young, so we will continue to incubate it within Modular until more of its internal architecture is fleshed out. We don’t have an established plan yet.

Why not develop Mojo in the open from the beginning?

Mojo is a big project and has several architectural differences from previous languages. We believe a tight-knit group of engineers with a common vision can move faster than a community effort. This development approach is also well-established from other projects that are now open source (such as LLVM, Clang, Swift, MLIR, etc.)."

Re: Mojo – a new programming language for AI developers

#73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh god I hope this is not a close source language. I have spent 10+ years fighting the MATLAB ecosystem, I prefer not to spend the next 10 years fighting this thing.

Matlab existed for a reason, and has since become irrelevant, in particular in the face of python being used as a more flexible open source scientific computing scripting language. If this is closed source, it's already as irrelevant as matlab so no reason to fight it. If there are useful bits there will be python versions of them.

> Matlab existed for a reason, and has since become irrelevant

My man I wish this was true. I am not exaggerating the 10+ year thing, there are very important industries being run today on MATLAB. You remember the moment when you learned that a lot of wall street runs on excel? This is the moment you learn a lot of silicon manufacturing runs on MATLAB. An obscene amount.

Re: Mojo – a new programming language for AI developers

#74
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly what I was trying to figure out. It seems like the answer is no at this time.

From their FAQ https://docs.modular.com/mojo/faq.html "Will Mojo be open-sourced? Yes, we expect that Mojo will be open-sourced. However, Mojo is still young, so we will continue to incubate it within Modular until more of its internal architecture is fleshed out. We don’t have an established plan yet. Why not develop Mojo in the open from the beginning? Mojo is a big project and has several architectural differences…

Their response to why it's faster to move while closed source seems kinda like a false dichotomy. They can choose to start with it open disallow input from the community or close their issue tracker to the community.

Re: Mojo – a new programming language for AI developers

#75

Is this usable as a general purpose language, or is it too tailored to AI/ML tasks and thus missing a lot of 'general' libraries and such? How does performance compare to Python in the general case, when not dropping into tricks? Either way, kudos, exciting stuff, just questions I had after reading about it.

I'm also curious. Modular seems to be what Chris wanted with Swift, but couldn't because of Apple's thumb.

Re: Mojo – a new programming language for AI developers

#76

There are a bunch of questions about Julia, so I'll do my best to give a short answer to a very long and complicated topic. Up front, Julia is a wonderful language and a wonderful community, I am a super fan. That said, Mojo is a completely different thing. It is aligned with the Python community to solve specific problems outlined here: https://docs.modular.com/mojo/why-mojo.html Mojo also has a bunch of technical a…

Why is "no GC" an advantage for something aimed at such high-level tasks?

Re: Mojo – a new programming language for AI developers

#77

Is this usable as a general purpose language, or is it too tailored to AI/ML tasks and thus missing a lot of 'general' libraries and such? How does performance compare to Python in the general case, when not dropping into tricks? Either way, kudos, exciting stuff, just questions I had after reading about it.

Looks great for writing compilers in to me. Doesn't need much in the way of external libs, really well positioned to build parts of MLIR using it.

Re: Mojo – a new programming language for AI developers

#78
post #59
post #2

Well, I'm blown away. If this succeeds, it will allow you to use Python for the entire AI stack: high-level model composition (as usual), fast compiled CPU code (instead of, say, libs written with C++), and on-device operations (instead of, say, libs that use CUDA). Oh, and it will make your Python code parallel (i.e., there's no GIL). Obviously, we'll have to wait until Mojo is production-ready, but I'm excited afte…

>> If this succeeds, it will allow you to use Python for the entire AI stack [...] If this succeeds, the terminal endpoint will be the Python Software Foundation adopting Modular as the defacto and eventually official implementation since, as Modular noted in their docs, they effectively need Mojo to be absolutely amazing on generalized host CPUs as the key enabler allowing for the unified Python-superset experience…

No it won't. The language is not a super-set of Python, its another language that somewhat resembles Python. You can't drop in some Python code and run it with Mojo and expect it to work.

Re: Mojo – a new programming language for AI developers

#79
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From their FAQ https://docs.modular.com/mojo/faq.html "Will Mojo be open-sourced? Yes, we expect that Mojo will be open-sourced. However, Mojo is still young, so we will continue to incubate it within Modular until more of its internal architecture is fleshed out. We don’t have an established plan yet. Why not develop Mojo in the open from the beginning? Mojo is a big project and has several architectural differences…

Their response to why it's faster to move while closed source seems kinda like a false dichotomy. They can choose to start with it open disallow input from the community or close their issue tracker to the community.

Why bother doing it that way? Just to entertain people who works like to observe the commit history as the language evolves?

Re: Mojo – a new programming language for AI developers

#80
post #34
post #18

So is this actually Python or not? I’m a bit confused.

It's a superset of Python. What you call "Python" is actually CPython, a C implementation of the Python language. Many other Python implementations exist, though they typically don't support all packages well (for example lack of support of native Python extensions like what Numpy relies on). It looks like Mojo has its own runtime (so not CPython) but also packages CPython for compatibility?

Wrong, Mojo is not a runtime for Python.
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