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The Mojo language (by Modular, now Qualcomm) is now open-source

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81–90 of 121 posts

Re: The Mojo language (by Modular, now Qualcomm) is now open-source

#81

If you like C++, you're going to like Mojo (if you're looking for alternatives). Some of the semantics and designs are inspired by C++, but wrapped in a Python-like skin. The way to think about Mojo, when compared to Rust, is that it was designed by expert C++ programmers as what they imagine a good C++ will look like. When I see Rust, I see designers who loved the functional programming paradigm and wanted to make a…

> expert C++ programmers as what they imagine a good C++ will look like Mojo looks nice but with coding agents the landscape has shifted at least in my view. There is no need for DSLs and abstractions that reduce human cognitive load. So, I still struggle with the usecase for Mojo. If you want close to metal performance, code in something that touches metal (c,c++), and doesnt abstract you away from it or require uns…

that you can visualize precisely what the hw is doing with no abstractions to hide it.

How can one hold the nuances of different architectures in their head, unless you stick to something like a console that doesn't evolve much for a half a decade or more? Don't you want at least some abstraction?

Re: The Mojo language (by Modular, now Qualcomm) is now open-source

#82
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm confused, C and C++ do require unsafe primitives? I think I must be misunderstanding your comment somehow.

It sounds like they were saying that they think you shouldn't have to use a language primitive like `unsafe` to be able to do the stuff that C/C++ does. (To be clear, I completely disagree with this viewpoint, because I don't think there's any evidence at all that agents won't struggle with the same fundamental problems in writing C/C++ that humans do, but I think it's what they're saying).

[deleted]

Re: The Mojo language (by Modular, now Qualcomm) is now open-source

#83
post #65

I would add quick note to this as title is misleading * It was partially open-sourced before this. There were a lot of cool things they open sourced before like MAX for large scale LLM serving which was outperforming VLLM, Dynamo, etc on a lot of models. (super valuable GPU kernels). This is why Qualcomm acquire them imo. * Chris (also created swift) talked in the past the reason for not fully open-sourcing was more…

> Chris (also created swift) talked in the past the reason for not fully open-sourcing was more because he wanted to get all the core design decisions right. He said this was a big thing Swift got wrong as it scaled too quickly being fully open source at the beginning. Then he has learned the completely wrong lesson. Swift spent its first years floundering from breaking change to breaking change (from Swift 1.0 in 20…

Well I think point was if they had gotten some fundamental things right from beginning they would not have to go through this 4.0 -> 5.0 breakage mess.

> Rust was open-sourced from the outset, years before even its 0.1 release in 2012, which then allowed it to explore its design space in the hands of real users improving their own language without having to spend five years

One can keep pounding on this but endless discussions about pros/cons Rust Async model, library, framework bifurcation and shortcuts to deal with it does not seem like given an open design win that many in Rust community assume.

Going by the way Rust always seems to get inserted in any language related discussion no matter what, IMO it could a meme "What would Rust people do?" when deciding what should not be done.

Re: The Mojo language (by Modular, now Qualcomm) is now open-source

#84
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Julia is a Lisp, just like Dylan or Lisp 2. Many Lisps have that capability.

IMO saying julia is literally a lisp is just not worth the type of discussion it generates. I'd much prefer to say the important part: Julia learned a ton of very important lessons from the lisp family of languages, and has integrated a lot of them.

isnt its core literally femtolisp, ehich was written by one of the julia authors?

Re: The Mojo language (by Modular, now Qualcomm) is now open-source

#85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Darklang is probably the closest thing that comes to mind - https://blog.darklang.com/goodbye-dark-inc-welcome-darklang-...

This was caused by the company running out of money, not by investor pressure, and it resulted in the language becoming more open rather than less. So it doesn't seem like an example at all.

>company running out of money, not by investor pressure

Potato potato

Re: The Mojo language (by Modular, now Qualcomm) is now open-source

#86
Slightly OT - but what's the process for training an LLM to author a new language like this proficiently?

I ask because I have my own language I maintain, and we're currently prompt-stuffing to get LLM's to author it - but I wonder what type of training set you'd need, and what base image one would use to fine-tune a model, and how effective it'd be?

Re: The Mojo language (by Modular, now Qualcomm) is now open-source

#87
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you remember how long it took Python 2.7 to die after Python 3 came out? Years. It was horrible.

I don't understand the point you're trying to make. Are you claiming that if Mojo was open source earlier, everyone would still be using the old versions for a long time? I don't buy the claim that a pre-1.0 language only a few years old without widespread production use is comparable to one of the most widely used languages on the planet that had been around for close to two decades at the time of what you're descri…

> Are you claiming that if Mojo was open source earlier, everyone would still be using the old versions for a long time?

No, just saying it's happened before and it doesn't seem unreasonable to be wary of it.

Re: The Mojo language (by Modular, now Qualcomm) is now open-source

#88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was caused by the company running out of money, not by investor pressure, and it resulted in the language becoming more open rather than less. So it doesn't seem like an example at all.

>company running out of money, not by investor pressure Potato potato

Those seem quite different to me? Any kind of endeavor reliant on paid labor needs a source of funding and has to shut down if it can't find any; that's different from a situation where a business could have been sustainable by itself but has already taken investment from VCs for whom that's not good enough.

Re: The Mojo language (by Modular, now Qualcomm) is now open-source

#89
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you remember how long it took Python 2.7 to die after Python 3 came out? Years. It was horrible.

I don't understand the point you're trying to make. Are you claiming that if Mojo was open source earlier, everyone would still be using the old versions for a long time? I don't buy the claim that a pre-1.0 language only a few years old without widespread production use is comparable to one of the most widely used languages on the planet that had been around for close to two decades at the time of what you're descri…

It prevents endless discussions on github, hurt egos when my precious PR is rejected by committers, and commentary on not being true open source because they are not welcoming source contribution, feature request, when they are trying stabilize compiler and so on.

Now none of these are guaranteed to happen when it is open source. But at least it is guaranteed to not happen when its not open source.

Re: The Mojo language (by Modular, now Qualcomm) is now open-source

#90
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't quite accurate; Mojo uses the same memory safety approach as Rust. It has some mutable aliasing, but only intra-function, so in practice programs will be pretty much Rust-shaped.

Their comment seems to be mostly focused on surface-level syntax from what I can tell (e.g. "wrapped in a Python-like skin"; "what they imagine a good C++ will look like"). Rust code probably does resemble functional languages to someone who uses C++ primarily, and Mojo doesn't resemble them as much. I don't find that to be a particularly enlightening insight, but I have to imagine that the syntax of Mojo is one of t…

Yeah exactly. Rust could also be thought of as a much better C++ (semantically) but syntatically it is much more functional, while Mojo adopts (and even extends) similar memory safety ideas but dressed in a skin that is potentially much more approachable to people used to procedural programmng.
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