Apple Swift Language 、LLVM Father of compiler Chris Lattner Of New trends , Attract the attention of the programmer circle .
The great God of compiler is now with Swift The core team parted ways 、 The news of a complete exit from administrative transactions has sparked a lot of discussion .
Lattner stay Swift The official forum revealed that , The reason for leaving is the team culture “ Toxic ”.
In particular, it points out , At a video conference last summer, he Be insulted And yelling , And this is not the first time .
After this conflict ,Lattner Gradually quit Swift Management and development of .
Anyway, he still has a lot of interests and career to do , Better look ahead , Out of sight, out of sight .
Now he is busy preparing for the new company Modular.ai, Committed to developing AI compiler 、 Infrastructure such as runtime .
Ah, this ,Swift What's wrong with the team , It can take the great God away ？
Lattner No longer a regular Apple employee five years ago , I have made Tesla autopilot Software VP、 Google Tensorflow Infrastructure supervisor 、SiFive President of Engineering .
however Swift This programming language developed by himself has always been in his mind , Insist on attending regular meetings every week 、 Participate in community discussions , I also wrote and iterated a lot of code myself .
Swift The language is growing , Replace the old Objective-C Become many companies to develop new products iOS Preferred language for application .
But the development direction of this language is gradually different from Lattner Our ideals diverge , For example, his design concept “ An effective combination of simple things ”（simple things that compose） It's no longer popular .
He's not the only one who feels this way , some Swift Loyal users are also disappointed .
I am here Swift I put a lot of money into it ,2015-2019 I've been an active member of the community for years , See the development direction of this language now , I'm a little sad .
The main annoyance of this elder brother is that the addition of some language features is too casual and hasty , Make the compilation process no longer transparent .
actually , trigger Lattner Posts that reveal the reasons for withdrawal , Is also discussing whether to add a Grammatical sugar .
One developer thinks , Adding grammar sugar at will is nothing for language maintainers , But the confusion will have a great impact on language users .
I'm not saying this feature is worthless , But I don't want it to be introduced into the idiom FA Tang , at present “ Break the neck of the language user ”.
And then , He quoted Lattner I published a paragraph about grammar sugar a long time ago .
Lattner It is considered that the main function of a programming language is equivalent to that of building a house “ Brick ”, Grammar sugar is equivalent to filling brick joints “ Mortar ”.
If the main body of the house is built, there is no problem to fill the joints .
If the bricks haven't been placed completely, wipe a lot of slurry first , The whole house was built of mortar , The structure will not be firm , I can't find a suitable place to put bricks in the future .
It seems that this difference is Swift Community has a long history , Until the video conference last summer , The conflict erupted centrally .
Lattner After being scolded at the meeting, I took a break , Later, I found the team management to talk .
He believes that management evades problems 、 Make excuses , And made it clear that it does not intend to take any measures in this regard .
Later, the great God decided to leave the weekly meeting temporarily , Only participate in forum discussions , Anyway, there are many other businesses to be busy with .
However, his opinions are increasingly ignored by the core team , I think it's a waste of time to go on like this , Finally leave completely .
Now? ,Swift The management team is trying to launch a new community governance mechanism to solve the problem .
They intend to refer to the successful experience of other programming languages and open source projects , Re establish a large working group focusing on the evolution iteration of the language itself , And let more community members participate in decision-making .
How should the programming language community be governed , Some netizens also expressed their views .
Some people think Python The father of such “ A benevolent lifelong dictator ” Pattern (BDFL, Benevolent Dictator For Life) Is king .
Python The father will listen to the community , But in the end, I made my own decision .
The old man thinks that all do not use BDFL The programming language of pattern will become miscellaneous due to too many features .
Because every member of the development team wants to add their desired features , The interaction between features brings square complexity , This makes users uncomfortable .
Other netizens think there is an exception ,Go Language Not run by a benevolent dictator , But the team always adheres to the simple design concept .
Go Every new feature proposal of the language will be carefully weighed and discussed , Some users feel that the update speed is slow, like a glacier moving , But I personally appreciate that .
Lattner I am Swift The official forum left the last paragraph of suggestions and blessings .
In my submission Swift It's a phenomenal language , There is success and long-term prospects , But it certainly shouldn't be a language designed by the community , This was written into the articles of association at the beginning of the project .
The new mechanism sounds promising …… A healthy and inclusive community is good for Swift Design and development of .
Finally, let's introduce Lattner Now get busy with your new career .
Modular.ai, Committed to rebuilding the world AI infrastructure .
Including compiler 、 Runtime environment , Design for heterogeneous computing 、 Focus on both edge and Data Center , And focus on usability .
Finally build a modular 、 AI with composable and layered architecture .
Co founder and chief product officer of the company Tim Davis, Previously, I participated in TF Lite、 Android ML、NNAPI Compiler development for projects such as .
The new company is recruiting a large number of compilers around the world 、 Runtime 、ML Ops And framework developers , And product managers and cloud computing Engineers .
Reference link ：
[1]https://forums.swift.org/t/core-team-to-form-language-workgroup/55455/6
[2]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30416070
[3]https://forums.swift.org/t/pitch-2-light-weight-same-type-requirement-syntax/55081/126
[4]https://www.modular.ai/careers
