Live data from Hacker News

Mojo: The usability of Python with the performance of C

stackoverflow.blog

11–20 of 59 posts

Re: Mojo: The usability of Python with the performance of C

#11
post #4

Both C and Python are open source. I can't take Mojo seriously until it does the same.

They've also claimed both on the page and in the podcast that certain testing reveals a 68,000x speed up vs Python. That's probably true in a select case, but this is why you use libraries in Python - to make use of all the hard work that already exists in C/C++ in those libraries, with Python serving as a high level and far easier to write functional wrapper. Ie anyone serious about performance isn't going to be loo…

All I know from the news is they have a marketing team that decided to jump on the AI hype bandwagon. Plus the aforementioned outlandish performance claims.

Unfortunately marketing like this tends to trigger an equal and opposite reaction in me.

Anyone with AI programming experience can comment on whether they have made any specific believable claims about performance?

Re: Mojo: The usability of Python with the performance of C

#12
post #4

Both C and Python are open source. I can't take Mojo seriously until it does the same.

They've also claimed both on the page and in the podcast that certain testing reveals a 68,000x speed up vs Python. That's probably true in a select case, but this is why you use libraries in Python - to make use of all the hard work that already exists in C/C++ in those libraries, with Python serving as a high level and far easier to write functional wrapper. Ie anyone serious about performance isn't going to be loo…

>That's probably true in a select case, but this is why you use libraries in Python - to make use of all the hard work that already exists in C/C++ in those libraries, with Python serving as a high level and far easier to write functional wrapper.

Yes, but that's also the issue they address. That you cant just write plain Python for something not covered by libraries and have it be fast. You need to then mess with extending with C, Cython, and so on.

Re: Mojo: The usability of Python with the performance of C

#13

Most bottlenecks are IO. "speed" is rarely as important as it's marketed to be. Also rust shared libraries are already there for pretty much every language that you actually need speed

>Most bottlenecks are IO

For web apps perhaps. They're not in that domain. In other domains IO is not the problem, CPU is.

>Also rust shared libraries are already there for pretty much every language that you actually need speed

Given that the whole selling point of this is to not have to use two languages, that's kind of irrelevant to this.

Re: Mojo: The usability of Python with the performance of C

#15

Most bottlenecks are IO. "speed" is rarely as important as it's marketed to be. Also rust shared libraries are already there for pretty much every language that you actually need speed

I'd like to see you solve certain Project Euler problems in Python.

Re: Mojo: The usability of Python with the performance of C

#16
post #9

The thing about Mojo is that the part they spend most of their time promoting in their online material (Python but faster and good for AI) doesn't seem to require a new language at all, but rather a new hardware-aware Python compiler and some extra library modules. It sure looks like they only turned it into a new language because they wanted to add static typing and immutable references, which maybe you care about a…

Indeed. It feels like it’s a nice language and, building on LLVM makes it stand on a solid foundation, but, still, it feels like a series of PEPs, some of which I can easily get behind. If they make mojo modules callable from Python code, it all becomes a whole lot more palatable.

Yes. It seems everybody is just creating this tiny small secret sauce and giving it a different name to lure venture capital.

I love the LLVM ecosystem, will touch Mojo only when they evolve it and build more bridges with the regular Python ecosystem.

Re: Mojo: The usability of Python with the performance of C

#17
post #11
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They've also claimed both on the page and in the podcast that certain testing reveals a 68,000x speed up vs Python. That's probably true in a select case, but this is why you use libraries in Python - to make use of all the hard work that already exists in C/C++ in those libraries, with Python serving as a high level and far easier to write functional wrapper. Ie anyone serious about performance isn't going to be loo…

All I know from the news is they have a marketing team that decided to jump on the AI hype bandwagon. Plus the aforementioned outlandish performance claims. Unfortunately marketing like this tends to trigger an equal and opposite reaction in me. Anyone with AI programming experience can comment on whether they have made any specific believable claims about performance?

If it wasn't for Chris Lattner I'd put Mojo in the same bucket as V thanks to said dissociated marketing team

Re: Mojo: The usability of Python with the performance of C

#18
post #11
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They've also claimed both on the page and in the podcast that certain testing reveals a 68,000x speed up vs Python. That's probably true in a select case, but this is why you use libraries in Python - to make use of all the hard work that already exists in C/C++ in those libraries, with Python serving as a high level and far easier to write functional wrapper. Ie anyone serious about performance isn't going to be loo…

All I know from the news is they have a marketing team that decided to jump on the AI hype bandwagon. Plus the aforementioned outlandish performance claims. Unfortunately marketing like this tends to trigger an equal and opposite reaction in me. Anyone with AI programming experience can comment on whether they have made any specific believable claims about performance?

Still early days to see whether this is niche or mainstream.

As of today, I’d bet it is niche like Julia, R, etc.

Re: Mojo: The usability of Python with the performance of C

#20

Both C and Python are open source. I can't take Mojo seriously until it does the same.

C isn't open source.

To make a conforming C compiler, someone has to buy the ISO C standard (208 CHF), which other folks will then spend development resources in creating C compilers that obey said standard.

The biggest open source compilers, clang and GCC, only keep being up to date with ISO C, because of the money from IBM, Red-Hat, Apple, ARM, Intel, Green-Hills,... place in assigning company resources to work on them.

Post reply on HN