Chris Lattner Talks Swift, WWDC and More on This Week's ATP Podcast

[MacRumors]

Chris Lattner, known for his work on Xcode and Swift during his time at Apple, this week joined the Accidental Tech Podcast (ATP) hosted by Marco Arment, Casey Liss, and John Siracusa.

In a two hour and thirty minute long conversation, Lattner and the ATP team talked about Swift, the work that went into preparing for WWDC while he was at Apple, Apple's 2020 digital WWDC event, and more.

Lattner said that he's very interested to see how Apple handles the online version of WWDC, which is set to take place sometime in June.

Apple's a very strategic and very smart company and has a lot of very smart people. I'm sure they're looking at how to turn this into a new opportunity and what new things they can do with the format and how they can delight people in new ways.

As to whether the virtual WWDC event might result in physical WWDC events canceled in future years, Lattner speculated that it was a wait and see kind of situation.

I think that if they do WWDC virtually this year and it sucks then it's probably going to go physical again. I don't know. I would wager that it doesn't return to its original format. If it does, if there is an in-person event, I think it will be significantly different than what the historical events have been.

Chris Lattner was at Apple for 11 years before he left in 2017, and he also spent time at Tesla working on autopilot software and at Google working on TensorFlow. He's now the SVP of Platform Engineering at SiFive.

Lattner's full discussion about WWDC, TensorFlow, SiFive, Swift, and more can be listened to on the web.

Article Link: Chris Lattner Talks Swift, WWDC and More on This Week's ATP Podcast

 

[ChromeCrescendo]

I think during this insane situation we are all in, which is affecting our purchasing power, Apple should bring back the 6% cash back on Apple Card purchases from Apple that they ran during the holidays

 

[yanksrock100]

Well I really hope in-person WWDC's happen in the future

 

[PickUrPoison]

I think during this insane situation we are all in, which is affecting our purchasing power, Apple should bring back the 6% cash back on Apple Card purchases from Apple that they ran during the holidays

Agreed. It wouldn’t surprise me at all to see promos like this, maybe better trade-in values.

 

[DeepIn2U]

Chris did some insane work at Apple, especially with SWIFT (think that was his baby). I'm not sure how good he is or if the reason he left Apple was no elevation for his career yet I suspect that maybe the case. Good spirited person and a brilliant mind. Hoping he can return to Apple in some capacity.

 

[Blackstick]

Decidedly one of the most brilliant minds in his field.

 

[now i see it]

My guess: (as I look into my crystal ball) WWDC as we knew it is gone forever. (If so, I bet everyone involved with it is letting out a huge sigh of relief).

 

[wellander1]

Yep apple has lost a lot of good people lately.
No wonder the quality had seemed to gone down hill (mostly in buggy software)

 

[DeepIn2U]

Decidedly one of the most brilliant minds in his field.

Interestingly enough ... Chris L is now working at SiFive ... which creates RISC-V design and IP ... amongst their partners (https://www.sifive.com/partners) is TSMC! Things that make you go hmmm.

EDIT (more digging):

Samsung to Use SiFive RISC-V Cores for SoCs, Automotive, 5G Applications

www.anandtech.com

One of the applications that Samsung is using RISC-V cores in is mmWave RF processing by its upcoming 5G RF front-end modules. The latter will be used for Samsung’s flagship 5G smartphones due in 2020 (sic Galaxy S20 Pro/Pro+). The RISC-V cores will also be used for AI image sensors, security management, AI computing & control.

~ since RISC-V does not use royalties for Arm Holdings, INC I'm curious if Apple still does with their A series chips?

I'll check out Chris' interview posted here could be as fun and as interesting as Scott Forstall's

 

[ChromeCrescendo]

Agreed. It wouldn’t surprise me at all to see promos like this, maybe better trade-in values.

When the Mac Pro first came out, I missed the 6% holiday deal and have been waiting for the W5700x

When it first came out, I checked my trade-in value with Apple (seemed the easiest method) and they quoted me $680 for my late-2015 4gHz Quad core i7 (I had upgraded on my own, via OWC, to 32GB RAM but Apple only checks the serials number specs as purchased) - and they offered me $680 trade-in

I checked again last week and it was down to $600

I assume I will eventually have to pay Apple to take it off my hands

IF they came out with the W5700x and offered the 6% I would immediately order it along with the XDR

 

[mi7chy]

Interesting he's now at SiFive which is a competitor to ARM. Hopefully this will light the fire under ARM since their progress has slowed from lack of competition.

 

[ppetrovic]

~ since RISC-V does not use royalties for Arm Holdings, INC I'm curious if Apple still does with their A series chips?

Chris mentions in the podcast that Apple still uses ARM instruction set and then goes on to talk about why they might one day ditch it and make their own for the future A chips. The podcast is over 2.5 hours long but it has tons of interesting insight into many low level stuff.

 

[FrankCataldi14]

This guy has worked in three places in three years.

Generally a warning sign when hiring someone....

 

[coolfactor]

This guy has worked in three places in three years.

Generally a warning sign when hiring someone....

If he adds value and moves on, it's still value added. It's not like normal jobs where they need to invest significant time and energy into training him to do a job. He's coming into it already mastering his field.

 

[AxiomaticRubric]

Chris did some insane work at Apple, especially with SWIFT (think that was his baby). I'm not sure how good he is or if the reason he left Apple was no elevation for his career yet I suspect that maybe the case. Good spirited person and a brilliant mind. Hoping he can return to Apple in some capacity.

Chris Lattner’s baby is the LLVM compiler. He was on the panel for the development of Swift and helped steer some of the internal design decisions.

He left Apple because the company couldn’t challenge him anymore.

 

[mdriftmeyer]

When the Mac Pro first came out, I missed the 6% holiday deal and have been waiting for the W5700x

When it first came out, I checked my trade-in value with Apple (seemed the easiest method) and they quoted me $680 for my late-2015 4gHz Quad core i7 (I had upgraded on my own, via OWC, to 32GB RAM but Apple only checks the serials number specs as purchased) - and they offered me $680 trade-in

I checked again last week and it was down to $600

I assume I will eventually have to pay Apple to take it off my hands

IF they came out with the W5700x and offered the 6% I would immediately order it along with the XDR

The W5700X won't be coming out. It'll be replaced with Big Navi.
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Chris Lattner’s baby is the LLVM compiler. He was on the panel for the development of Swift and helped steer some of the internal design decisions.

He left Apple because the company couldn’t challenge him anymore.

He left Apple because he was never going to be promoted to SVP.

 

[ChromeCrescendo]

The W5700X won't be coming out. It'll be replaced with Big Navi.

Then why has it been listed on Apple's Mac Pro website for months? Is that a tease? Is it going away? Do you have inside information you can share (please)?

 

[ksgant]

I liked the part where John Siracusa talked about the things he doesn't like. Wait, that's every episode.

 

[AustinIllini]

Illini!

also, much love for ATP, the best tech podcast

 

[ksec]

I am still not convinced Swift is the right track. 5 years since its introduction most part of Apple, Backend, Front End and Apps are still not written in Swift. It is clear from the podcast Swift is still not really "ready", and there is still much to do and test. May be in the future, once they have ownership, concurrency model and other major blocks ready.

At least Chris is backing off his claims that Swift is trying to be good at everything. So that is a relieve.

Even Swift UI has been baking in Apple for 4 years. And it is no where near done.

Seems to be Objective-C has a long way to go.
[automerge]1585360981[/automerge]

Interestingly enough ... Chris L is now working at SiFive ... which creates RISC-V design and IP ... amongst their partners (https://www.sifive.com/partners) is TSMC! Things that make you go hmmm.

EDIT (more digging):

Samsung to Use SiFive RISC-V Cores for SoCs, Automotive, 5G Applications

www.anandtech.com

~ since RISC-V does not use royalties for Arm Holdings, INC I'm curious if Apple still does with their A series chips?

I'll check out Chris' interview posted here could be as fun and as interesting as Scott Forstall's

Not really, the two things are different and people constantly mixing them together. RISC-V 's main competitors are the much smaller embedded ARM Cortex-M and ISA like Arc. It is not really a competitor to mainstream ARM processors.

 

[PickUrPoison]

Then why has it been listed on Apple's Mac Pro website for months? Is that a tease? Is it going away? Do you have inside information you can share (please)?

Just took a look at the tech specs section, I didn’t realize it’s a full-on MPX module. It’s been promoted as “coming soon” since nearly the Mac Pro’s release in early December. I have trouble thinking they wouldn’t have pulled it by now if there was any reason to think it wouldn’t (eventually) be coming out. But why it still hasn’t been released is somewhat puzzling.

Either it or something better and cheaper will hopefully be released soon; mid-June will be six months, and that would seem to stretch the definition of “soon”.

 

[44267547]

This guy has worked in three places in three years.

Generally a warning sign when hiring someone....

In the tech sector, that’s Not uncommon at all. Think about Silicon Valley for a second, how many prospects shift around in that area alone for different job potential opportunities, promotions, career growth, it’s all about climbing the ladder to find A company that meets your expectations and vice versa.

 

[MacLawyer]

Decidedly one of the most brilliant minds in his field.

And he such great seasons at Duke..........oh, wait.

 

[vmachiel]

This guy has worked in three places in three years.

Generally a warning sign when hiring someone....

In the interview he mentions that he always goes for the job or project with the highest risk, because those are the most interesting and can make the most impact. Those obviously work out less often.

He left Tesla because of a direct disagreement with Elon, which I personally can imagine 🙂

 

[szw-mapple fan]

Yep apple has lost a lot of good people lately.
No wonder the quality had seemed to gone down hill (mostly in buggy software)

That's what you got from this?

Comments like these have existed since forever on this site. It's always funny to see how people's opinion on things change over time with a nostalgia filter.