Very bold of them expecting people to use a language with a closed source compiler in the 2020s.
from what I understand the goal for now is not to get the people to use it, but for enthusiasts to try it
Mojo 1.0 Beta
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Re: Mojo 1.0 Beta
#12When I first heard about Mojo I somehow got the impression that they intended to make it compatible with existing Python code. But it seems like they are very far away from that for the foreseeable future. I guess you can call back and forth between Python and Mojo but Mojo itself can't run existing Python code.
In their original pitch that was definitely part of it: take Python code, add type hints, get a big speedup. As they've built it out it seems to have diverged.
Re: Mojo 1.0 Beta
#13Very bold of them expecting people to use a language with a closed source compiler in the 2020s.
They've said they'll open source the compiler alongside the 1.0 release.
Re: Mojo 1.0 Beta
#14When I first heard about Mojo I somehow got the impression that they intended to make it compatible with existing Python code. But it seems like they are very far away from that for the foreseeable future. I guess you can call back and forth between Python and Mojo but Mojo itself can't run existing Python code.
The communication had me try to run some very simple python code assuming it of course should run (reading files line by line), which didn't work at all.
For me this was a big disappointment, and I wonder how much this has backfired across developers.
Re: Mojo 1.0 Beta
#15Am I old or remembering this wrong... didn't Zuck write the first iteration of Facebook in PHP, and then spend millions to hire people to write something that converted the code to C++?
Re: Mojo 1.0 Beta
#16I was excited when Mojo launched and thought it might grow big quick. I don't see much traction. The pitch is compelling. What could be the issue?
When it was announced it was not generally available for everyone to try out. There was a waitlist phase.
Re: Mojo 1.0 Beta
#17>No more choosing between productivity and performance - Mojo gives you both.
That's a very big claim.
Re: Mojo 1.0 Beta
#18I am actually on a lookout for a low level language which compiles to web assembly to write a (relatively small) supervised learning model which I plan to be good enough for 5 year old phone CPUs. I have a working prototype in Julia and was planning on (eventually) rewrite it in Rust mostly for the web assembly target. I come from a high level language background so the thought of rewriting in rust is a little daunting. So I was excited to learn about Mojo and find out if they had a WebAssembly target in their compiler.
But then I read this:
> AI native
> Mojo is built from the ground up to deliver the best performance on the diverse hardware that powers modern AI systems. As a compiled, statically-typed language, it's also ideal for agentic programming.
Well, no thank you. I know the irony here but I want nothing to do with a language made for robots.
Re: Mojo 1.0 Beta
#19I was excited when Mojo launched and thought it might grow big quick. I don't see much traction. The pitch is compelling. What could be the issue?
As someone who would have strong reasons to invest time in Modular (simple high performant language for implementing bioinformatics scripts), I would say primarily the worry that development might be too tied to Modular, the startup behind it, which eventually might pivot into other priorities.
One would want to see either a strong community build up around it, or really hard evidence for a long-term commitment to the language from Modular. And the latter will take a long time to be assured of I think.
Also, editing tools need to catch up before very wide adoption of a language with a lot of new syntax.
Re: Mojo 1.0 Beta
#20I was excited when Mojo launched and thought it might grow big quick. I don't see much traction. The pitch is compelling. What could be the issue?
Mojo is still NOT open source (the standard library is but not the compiler). Open source is table stakes for a
modern programming language.