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Swift and Xcode Head Chris Lattner Leaving Apple for Tesla This Month [Updated]
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I hope his leaving helps better tease Swift out of Apple and towards more cross-platform capabilities. Swift with Android Studio programming all the Things?
Yes, please.
Yes, please.
As a developer, I'm sad to hear this. Swift is probably my favorite software product to come out of Apple in the last 15+ years. It's made me a better, more productive, and happier developer and hopefully that translates into better software. Not sure how many capable disciples he's leaving behind at Apple. But hopefully he's still involved enough to keep guiding Swift forward.
I've been speculating that Apple's big move in its desktop/macOS space is to get all of the necessary tools up and running on non-Apple HW and then bailing out of the desktop/laptop area altogether to focus on the mobile stuff. Maybe even toss macOS over the side into open source as in the old darwin days. As long as mobile app developers have the platforms needed to develop apps, Apple doesn't really care any more about computers per se. Maybe Chris' move is a visible part of this larger activity within Apple. Next move might be an open source Snow Leopard (oh PLEASE!).
Swift 3 has proven itself both fast and secure enough to run interactively inside an iPad Playground sandbox. So, Swift 4 would be great, not only for Android apps and linux servers, but to replace the horrid mess of EMCA/Javascript as the scripting language of choice inside web browsers. So why not try to dominate the world? (except for the tiny stuff with much less than a fraction of a GB)
I'm so thankful for your warnings and others just like this one. I would probably suffer the worst possible panic attack as a complication of a heart attack had it not been for someone immediately writing something so selfless and valiant. My eyes are safer on this forum because of it. Thank you.
Indeed. Just to add though - Because a company is a hugely profitable and perceived as being very desirable, doesn't mean it's actually a great place to work. Not for every single employee.
I have been lucky enough to work at one bluechip company that is huge in its field, seeminlgy at the top of its game. I was so excited to get a role there but once inside though it was simply awful. Not just my opinion either.
The new management was in dissary with many clearly having been promoted too quick and not with the necessary skills, teams working against each other and more office politics than in Westminster.
It was a great relief to leave but a bitter disappointment as I loved and love the brand still.
I once did some work for Apple at a trade show and found their process to be highly bureaucratic. I would work for half the price to avoid those conditions. Instead I started a company and work for double without those conditions. I read the comment as a version of that.
True. There are many successful people who leave fortune 500 companies and organizations on to something else. Whether that be a life change or advancements in that position, there are various reasons why.
However, this article and or any other article pertaining to an Apple employee leaving worth noting if, it's usually someone likes to assume the reason why were they forced out, or was the position not suited for them. And as secretive as Apple is, people like to start guessing in the dark and fabricate reasons why the mysterious departure.
So negative lol. We did read this. he is leaving of own free will. Now the other guy whose job was just removed for CLI and automation....those comments were warranted. Having a section manager post just pulled...not a good sign most times. Rare in business to have a team/section/division with no manager.
If my CEO came down and said who runs this section so I can speak to them and I started rambling off the constitutional peasant bit from Monty python not seeing that go over well.
Well Mr. CEO....We're an anarcho-syndicalist commune! We're taking
turns to act as a sort of executive-officer-for-the-week--
google the rest if you want lol
This...my CEO would not dig an obvious understatement.
He just wants to work his own thing which is cool. Also pretty sure someone internally has been groomed to replace him. Hopefully...we will save the doom and gloom for that. Especially if an outsider, I tend to like internal hirings since they have some history. Also tend to avoid stupid management games. Like well I have to do the the new sheriff in town bit...so I will change crap just to assert my authority.
There's a long way before Swift can replace existing languages out of server side development. The 3rd party support is just too rich for existing languages such as Java, C#, Python etc etc.
Javascript isn't perfect but its improving with ES6.
Basically. And the move to more open source use only happened what? a year ago? It could expand in use in time it just may have to play catch up to languages that have been open source since day 1...and around as such for a bit.
Forgot:
Also, Swift would need to be windows-friendly - i.e., windows based compiler. There's a whole lot of development shops that use windows as their development OS of choice.
This guy is smarter than smart. He created LLVM and has made much of modern Apple OS what it is under the hood. He will be missed. Sad for Apple to lose such a brilliant contributor.
I predict that all iOS development will, in a couple of years, be either linux or windows. Apple does not make the hardware that is required for efficient development work, nor do they care.
Very true. There can an army of say linux servers in the server room...but end use is windows side.With the windows servers in the middle somewhere of course. LAMP and some other web stacks has gotten some windows faithful off IIS or death mindset to varying degrees. Its AD, exchange and other server/service options though...tends to keep a M$ shop from wandering too far from the fold.
He may have accepted a position at IBM to help get their server-side Swift platform going (pure speculation of course).
Sure, but seems like we are reading about more people leaving (or being pushed out) of Apple than we use to. When these engineers get near the top it's not necessarily the money that keep them there and an increasingly bureaucratic hierarchy will often think about looking for their next career move. Especially when you are near the top you either see a fulfilling future and stay or you move on.
They still are. But going to a startup offers the potential to get a multi-million (or even billion) dollar payout. You don't get that from going to big tech companies. People aren't making that taking jobs (other than very high senior executive positions potentially) at Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, etc.
Having that Apple, Google, Facebook job on your resume will get you in just about anywhere in the tech industry at this point but startups have become very appealing to many looking to make quick money.
And for many people like that it's also about the challenge of something new and perhaps something of their own that often enough plays big role in things of that nature too.
Like any job, there's only so far you can move up. The higher you get, the less positions above you. Unless turnover is high, it could be years before a position the next step up opens up.
This is why most CEOs aren't promoted into their positions but instead jump from one company to another to take that promotion. It's also why most senior executives do the same.
It shouldn't be a surprise to see people leaving companies the higher they get. They generally have to in order to continue to move up.
