<story><title>Welcome Chris Lattner</title><url>https://www.tesla.com/blog/welcome-chris-lattner</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>abalone</author><text>What&amp;#x27;s really interesting about this is not just that Lattner is brilliant and liked, but that is highlights just how critical &lt;i&gt;software correctness and reliability&lt;/i&gt; is to autonomous vehicles. Naively one might have expected some machine learning expert to take over the reins at Tesla. But fast-moving Silicon Valley needs a fundamental shift in quality standards when it comes to safety-critical software, and if you look closely, Lattner has been leading this charge at the language and compiler level.&lt;p&gt;His work has been distinguished by the melding of language &lt;i&gt;safety&lt;/i&gt;, &lt;i&gt;reliability&lt;/i&gt; and &lt;i&gt;clarity&lt;/i&gt;, that is, not merely having sophisticated constructs that help the guarantee correctness, but also making code simple, beautiful and easy to read. Ultimately writing safe code depends on the ability of the programmer to comprehend it, so creating a programming environment that&amp;#x27;s successful on all fronts is a foundational achievement.&lt;p&gt;A notable example: LLVM enabled ARC, a beautifully simple approach to memory management that removed much (not all) of the need for the developer to implement details in code, while providing high efficiency and, perhaps even more importantly, predictable performance (no garbage collection pauses). These are all essential for safety-critical realtime software.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>pjmlp</author><text>&amp;gt; LLVM enabled ARC, a beautifully simple approach to memory management that removed much (not all) of the need for the developer to implement details in code, while providing high efficiency and, perhaps even more importantly, predictable performance (no garbage collection pauses). These are all essential for safety-critical realtime software.&lt;p&gt;A GC algorithm known since the early days of Lisp GC research and used in languages like Mesa&amp;#x2F;Cedar in the late 70&amp;#x27;s.&lt;p&gt;I can think of lots of other examples, like how VB, Delphi and C++ Builder interfaced with COM in the mid-90&amp;#x27;s.&lt;p&gt;Yes, ARC PR made automatic memory management to those without background in compiler research more easy to accept, specially if they weren&amp;#x27;t aware of the stability issues that trying to implement a tracing GC in Objective-C semantics meant.&lt;p&gt;However it goes without saying, that Lattner is really brilliant and his work on LLVM as a compiler building tool, as well as, clang in regards to improving the status quo of C static analysis tooling and compiler error messages, is really notable.&lt;p&gt;In regards to ARC, maybe also in terms of PR, as now there is a whole generation of developers that thinks reference counting isn&amp;#x27;t garbage collection.</text></comment>
<story><title>Welcome Chris Lattner</title><url>https://www.tesla.com/blog/welcome-chris-lattner</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>abalone</author><text>What&amp;#x27;s really interesting about this is not just that Lattner is brilliant and liked, but that is highlights just how critical &lt;i&gt;software correctness and reliability&lt;/i&gt; is to autonomous vehicles. Naively one might have expected some machine learning expert to take over the reins at Tesla. But fast-moving Silicon Valley needs a fundamental shift in quality standards when it comes to safety-critical software, and if you look closely, Lattner has been leading this charge at the language and compiler level.&lt;p&gt;His work has been distinguished by the melding of language &lt;i&gt;safety&lt;/i&gt;, &lt;i&gt;reliability&lt;/i&gt; and &lt;i&gt;clarity&lt;/i&gt;, that is, not merely having sophisticated constructs that help the guarantee correctness, but also making code simple, beautiful and easy to read. Ultimately writing safe code depends on the ability of the programmer to comprehend it, so creating a programming environment that&amp;#x27;s successful on all fronts is a foundational achievement.&lt;p&gt;A notable example: LLVM enabled ARC, a beautifully simple approach to memory management that removed much (not all) of the need for the developer to implement details in code, while providing high efficiency and, perhaps even more importantly, predictable performance (no garbage collection pauses). These are all essential for safety-critical realtime software.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>devsquid</author><text>ARC is a whole debate, but the one thing it is not is simple and I would argue its more error prone than a traditional GC. I&amp;#x27;ve used it for most of my career and I have seen what sloppy&amp;#x2F;unaware coding can do to it.&lt;p&gt;Lattner is a well known expert on compilers. Having used Swift since its inception, I would call into question the reliability of the Swift LLVM compiler. In its current state (3.0.2) its absolutely terrible and does not back up the sentiment; &amp;quot;But fast-moving Silicon Valley needs a fundamental shift in quality standards when it comes to safety-critical software, and if you look closely, Lattner has been leading this charge at the language and compiler level&amp;quot;.</text></comment>