
Interview with Chris Lattner [audio] - xenadu02
http://atp.fm/episodes/205
======
favorited
Just for fun, check out these 2 carpentry projects he did for his family:

[https://twitter.com/clattner_llvm/status/736237407016607744](https://twitter.com/clattner_llvm/status/736237407016607744)
[https://twitter.com/clattner_llvm/status/818499400313909249](https://twitter.com/clattner_llvm/status/818499400313909249)

How he had time to work a director-level job at , develop a new programming
language, oversee/participate in the OSS work for LLVM/Clang/Swift, and build
things like these I'll never know.

~~~
rcarmo
I would bet on relentless compartmentalisation, i.e., making sure he kept on
going and took advantage of the different contexts to get a breather/clear his
mind for the others.

But he does mention the house took months to build, and handcrafts are a great
hobby...

~~~
arcticbull
To some extent Apple's secrecy makes it easier to compartmentalize. You're
literally forbidden by work from talking to people outside the company
including friends and family. Now assuming you don't take that to mean 'always
be at work', it's not all bad. That was my experience there.

~~~
sdegutis
> _" You're literally forbidden by work from talking to people outside the
> company including friends and family."_

Wait, what? This is the first I've heard of Apple forbidding you from _talking
to anyone else_. Unless you mean specifically about the project, and not just
_ever and about anything_?

~~~
mattnewton
He means about work.

------
Zezima
This was an awesome episode with great questions from everyone (John, Casey,
Marco).

Massive respect for Lattner and his long, multi-year, persistence to making
amazing world-changing software and actually caring about open source.

One of the best ATP episodes in years!

~~~
mitchty
Agreed, I especially loved Chris putting John to the mat on GC vs ARC. Also,
you can't argue Chris isn't technical.

Now I wish there was a podcast where language implementors could talk about
all of this stuff.

I just don't get the yellow car bit at all.

~~~
nickm12
> Also, you can't argue Chris isn't technical.

Is this a typo? As a programmer, I wish I was as technical as Chris Lattner's
used kleenex.

~~~
mitchty
Not a typo. You'd have to go back and listen to the prior podcast. But for
reference, the discussion was basically (I'm paraphrasing):

    
    
        - Chris is leaving because Apple is doomed 
        - Chris couldn't get into the rumored Apple car division
        - Chris was being forced into a more VP/management role
        - etc...
    

When it sounds more to me that he just likes making new things that solve hard
problems. And I imagine Apple is in a good spot and he just wanted a change of
pace. 11 Years at one company is a pretty good run.

------
jmduke
I would _love_ to see Swift become a reasonable alternative for server-side
development and, in general, non-Apple development.

I have my misgivings with the iOS/macOS development stack (chief among them
being Xcode), but Swift is probably the language I enjoy writing in most. It's
powerful and expressive and pleasant.

I'm happy to know that even with Chris leaving, the pieces are set in motion
for the language's expansion to other contexts.

~~~
santaclaus
> I have my misgivings with the iOS/macOS development stack

Clang is pretty amazing. The world before and after Clang are very different
places, so I'd say Apple has had a really positive impact here.

------
newsat13
Oooh shots taken at Rust (~56:00). He claims rust doesn't have much adoption
and swift caters better to application programmers. Wonder what the rust
community thinks about it.

~~~
diimdeep
Also later he mentions that, Swift might add `borrow checking` but not at the
core of type system and required to be used like in Rust, but as extra
optional feature, that way Swift is still easy to get started with, but for
more advanced programmers for example in kernel development is will be
convenient addition.

~~~
tejinderss
I wish rust could have taken a similar approach. I want to do rust development
for general purposes as opposed to writing kernels and browser engines in it.
I think swift or go are better targeted for these purposes, I wish swift scene
on linux becomes viable in the next version.

~~~
jnbiche
> I wish rust could have taken a similar approach.

Then use Swift. Other than the approach to memory, Swift is extremely similar
to Rust.

> I wish swift scene on linux becomes viable in the next version.

Swift 3.0 is totally viable on Linux. And Swift package manager works great,
although it's not quite as nice as Cargo (yet!). I've been very impressed with
Swift on Linux, but I've yet to use it for production (although there are lots
of folks who are). There are some _very_ nice web frameworks for Linux in
Swift. I'd say that for web, Swift on Linux is more advanced than Rust. Take a
look at Perfect, Zewo, Kitura, etc. They've even got lots of
authentication/authorization plugins, which last I checked no Rust framework
had.

~~~
binarycrusader
Swift's ties to Grand Central Dispatch for concurrency are wholly unfortunate
though. I would have far preferred to see a native language take on that
instead of porting GCD to every platform.

~~~
favorited
There will be a Swift-specific concurrency story, it's just a lower-priority
since GCD is available to fill in the gap for now.

Here's an overview of how theoretical language features could enable library
implementations of coroutines+channels, async/await, or actors:

[https://github.com/apple/swift/blob/master/docs/proposals/Co...](https://github.com/apple/swift/blob/master/docs/proposals/Concurrency.rst)

------
peterclary
The discussion about ARC vs GC would be very interesting. Is there a
transcript anywhere for the hearing impaired?

~~~
jen729w
I thought this might help, but it doesn't give actual transcripts, just the
ability to search keywords.

[http://podsearch.david-smith.org](http://podsearch.david-smith.org)

Which bit are you interested in? If it's a <~10 minute section, I'll
transcribe it for you over the weekend. Contact details are in my bio.

Edit: duh, Patient0 notes it below and it's one of the chapters of the
podcast! Drop me an email so I have your address; I'll also post it online
somewhere and drop a link here.

~~~
dronedronedrone
side note, _davidsmith has a blog post about why its a search rather than a
transcript-- basically the text to speech library he is using produced abysmal
results for transcription, but was good enough for search.

