Talks to Watch

Chris Lattner: Future of Programming and AI | Lex Fridman Podcast #381

2M views · Jun 2, 2023 · 3:34:04 · 4 HN recommenders · 8 mentions · discussed 2023–2026

Lex Fridman's long podcast conversation with Chris Lattner, creator of Swift, LLVM and MLIR and co-founder of Modular. Topics include the Mojo language, the future of programming and AI, and hardware.

Why Hacker News points people here: HN points to it as the main place to hear Lattner's motivations and design ideas for Mojo, often in Mojo threads.

“further emboldened my stance that if Mojo can succeed, Lattner is one of the best-positioned engineers to see it through”HN comment, 2023

What Hacker News said 8

Recommendsteh_klevJun 2023

“might be of interest to readers”

Lattner discusses Mojo and other topics

Full comment

This episode of the Lex Fridman podcast, where Chris Lattner talks to Fridman about Mojo and other things, might be of interest to readers: this video

in “Mojo is a much better “Objective-C without the C” than Swift ever was” · view on HN
RecommendsspmurrayzzzJun 2023

“further emboldened my stance that if Mojo can succeed, Lattner is one of the best-positioned engineers to see it through”

Interview bolstered confidence in Lattner's ability to make Mojo succeed

Full comment

Lattner being behind Mojo always engendered some benefit of the doubt despite my initial gripes with the marketing claims, but his recent interview with Lex Fridman [1] further emboldened my stance that if Mojo can succeed, Lattner is one of the best-positioned engineers to see it through. [1] this video

in “Mojo is a much better “Objective-C without the C” than Swift ever was” · view on HN
RecommendsspacephysicsJul 2023

“Lex Friedman had a great podcast with the founder”

Podcast introducing Mojo as a Python superset with C speed

Full comment

Mojo seems like a very promising solution, despite it being AI oriented. Lex Friedman had a great podcast with the founder, its first version was released about a month ago, and in two weeks got 10k discord users. A superset of python that, once finished, can run all native python code, but also adds language features to get closer to the “metal”, getting speeds of C libraries with the ability to properly debug and step through it. If this project goes the way it’s promised (the guy has great experience with language development), this could further cement python as it would solve its biggest criticisms. Very excited for it this video link link

in “Show HN: Python can make 3M+ WebSocket keys per second” · view on HN
RecommendstonySep 2025

“Chris Lattner also has a very good episode on Lex Fridman”

Another Lattner appearance on the Lex Fridman show

Full comment

Chris Lattner also has a very good episode on Lex Fridman (Episode 381, June 2nd, 2023): - this video - link - link He has two other episodes on the show: - link (Episode 131, October 18th, 2020) - link (Episode 21, May 13th, 2019)

in “ML needs a new programming language – Interview with Chris Lattner” · view on HN
Cites itftxbroJun 2023

“he did a long interview with lex fridman recently as part of the same marketing blitz”

Long Lattner interview, framed as part of marketing push

Full comment

Anyone who doesn't know, this is by Chris Lattner the famous hacker who made projects like LLVM, Clang, Swift. link He is writing this as part of a marketing blitz for his new platform Mojo link If you want to see more, he did a long interview with lex fridman recently as part of the same marketing blitz this video maybe dang will put this into the recirculation queue and retitle it something like 'chris lattner writes blogpost' it will go to number one place on hacker news

in “Do LLMs eliminate the need for programming languages?” · view on HN
Cites ittipsytoadJun 2023

Lattner appeared on Lex Fridman recently

Full comment

I think largely because swift and mojo have the same creator, chris lattner. He was a guest on lex fridman last week this video

in “Mojo is a much better “Objective-C without the C” than Swift ever was” · view on HN
Cites itV1ndaarOct 2023

“when he talks about his ideas behind Mojo it pretty much sounds like he's describing Nim”

Lattner's Mojo ideas compared to Nim

Full comment

I mean honestly, the closest language to Mojo really is Nim. In the latest Lex Fridman interview with Chris Lattner [0] when he talks about his ideas behind Mojo it pretty much sounds like he's describing Nim. Ok fair, he wants Mojo to be a full superset of Python, but honestly with nimpy [1] our Python interop is about as seamless as it can really be (without being a superset, which Mojo clearly is not yet). Even the syntax of Mojo looks a damn lot like Nim imo. Anyway, I guess he has the ability to raise enough funds to hire enough people to write his own language within ~2 years so as not have to follow random peoples whim about where to take the language. So I guess I can't blame him. But as someone who's pretty invested in the Nim community it's quite a shame to see such a hyped language receive so much attention by people who should really check out Nim. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ [0]: this video [1]: link

in “Mojo is now available on Mac” · view on HN
Cites itjasodeAug 2026

“Deep link to Chris Lattner interview where he says he learned lessons from Swift being rapidly released as open source”

Lattner explains lessons from Swift's rapid open-sourcing

Full comment

>I don't understand what open source has to do with this. People being able to see your source code doesn't somehow prevent you from changing it however you want. Yes, they can voice their opinion on it, but you can also just ignore it. Deep link to Chris Lattner interview where he says he learned lessons from Swift being rapidly released as open source meant that early design decisions that were suboptimal caused quick revisions. This caused a lot of complaints when later revisions to Swift caused breakages. This caused a lot of stress for Chris & the Swift team so he says he didn't want to repeat that for Mojo. this video Sure, one can simple redo the exact same playbook with Mojo and iterate out in the open with early versions, and when people complain again about their code breaking, he can "just ignore it" but he didn't like that experience with Swift.

in “The Mojo language (by Modular, now Qualcomm) is now open-source” · view on HN