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by CoreyFieldens 1021 days ago
I'm really interested in Mojo not for its AI applications, but as an alternative to Julia for high performance computing. Like Julia, Mojo is also attempting to solve the two-language problem, but I like that Mojo is coming at it from a Python perspective rather than trying to create new syntax. For better or for worse, Python is absolutely dominating in the field of scientific computing, and I don't see that changing anytime soon. Being able to write optimizations at a lower level in a Python-like syntax is really appealing to me.

Furthermore, while I love Julia the language, I'm disappointed in how it really hasn't taken off in adoption by either academia or industry. The community is small and that becomes a real pain point when it comes to tooling. Using the debugger is an awful experience and the VSCode extension that is recommended way to write Julia is very hit-or-miss. I think it would really benefit from a lot more funding that doesn't actually seem to be coming. It's not a 1-to-1 comparison, but Modular has received 3 times the amount of funding as JuliaHub despite being much younger.
1 comments
pjmlp 1020 days ago
They already failed once with Swift for Tensorflow, so I am currently curious if there will be some lessons learned from that effort.

For the time being, my chips are still on the Julia horse.

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chrislattner 1019 days ago
I was responsible for the S4TF effort at Google. In my opinion, it validated that some of the ideas are good (e.g. Graph Program Extraction is the algorithm that torch dynamo uses internally), that an efficient compiled language has benefits etc. However, I also learned that it should not be based on Swift and should not be based on TensorFlow. Other than those two things, everything is great ;-)

More on GPE if you're curious: https://llvm.org/devmtg/2018-10/slides/Hong-Lattner-SwiftFor...

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pjmlp 1019 days ago
Thanks for replying, and the clarification.
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ElectronCharge 1020 days ago
I’m a huge Julia fan, you can take a look at my posting history. I love Julia’s syntax, and some of its language ideas.

…BUT…

For my personal tastes, Mojo’s lack of garbage collection, Rust-like memory safety, and attention to ahead-of-time compilation put it way ahead. The vast pool of Python developers who can easily pick it up if interested is a big plus.

Julia is aimed at a somewhat different space, but there’s also a huge overlap.

Let’s hope for good interoperability between the two, it seems fairly straightforward…

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pjmlp 1020 days ago
Lets see how it plays out, given that they are focused only on AI workloads, and somehow those VCs want their money back, which doesn't appeal to everyone.

I acknowledge that there is finally pressure in the Python community to tackle down performance, but don't see Mojo being the solution unless there is something that it will make it go wild.

Right now, I see that more likely with Facebook, NVidia, Intel and Microsoft efforts.

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