alt Hacker NewsI feel like this language would really benefit from some sort of 1-pager overview.
I just spent a fair bit of time on the official site, and I still don't think I have a very good grasp of what problem this language aims to solve, or why I would select it over other similar languages
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I felt the same way, even after browsing around on the website, and somehow I got to https://mojolang.org/docs/manual/quickstart/, which brings you to mojolang.org instead, which is the real website of the language it seems, instead of "Modular" which I guess is the business.
https://mojolang.org is a lot better as a introduction to the language for a programmer, at least for me, compared to whatever I could find on the modular.com website.
Having written a lot of Mojo over the last two year, just for fun, it's a really cool language. Ownership model adjacent to Rust, comptime in the realm of Zig, rich type system, first class SIMD support, etc. Performance wise it's the first language in long time that isn't just an LLVM wrapper. LLVM is still involved, but they are using it differently than say, Rust or Zig.
Very excited for Mojo once it's open sourced later this year.
Whoever behind the company communication have done an incredibly terrible job. They start with an extremely unnecessary polished Steve-Jobs-alike debut video when they have zero stuff to offer, while the founder name is already immensely trustworthy. Then follow with a very ugly AI-image-heavy website and blog posts, only to be reverted back to plain website later.
I'd love the language and platform be succesful, nevertheless.
It's supposed to be (currently) a fully native, Python-like language, but for GPUs primarily. Though I am seeing it as having a future as a fully native Python alternative that might get interesting.
I hope with 1.0 (havent fully read the article yet) they stop breaking language features / syntax because they did quite a few different changes over time, their overall goal is to be a fully native superset of Python.
I do see this one overtaking Nim over time, which kind of saddens me, because I like Nim for what it is, but Mojo trying to be a superset of Python is a no-brainer for most Python developers. Reminds me of how a lot of Go devs were former Python devs not C++.
You'd likely enjoy: https://mojolang.org/nightly/docs/vision/ for why we created it, and there's https://mojolang.org/nightly/docs/faq/ as well :)
Feedback welcome as always and thanks for checking it out! Encourage you to watch ModCon next week for some exciting announcements :)
This page really helped me to put it into perspective against Python:
https://www.modular.com/blog/an-easy-introduction-to-mojo-fo...
For me as a follower, my interest is all about a compiled and fast language with little complexity (vs Rust), and a highly readable and fluent syntax (vs Go).
I think they wrote an internal memo and by mistake they share with the public. I read because one person I know works there, now I don't know what my friend does there either. Sounds like another VC eating company.
https://github.com/py2many/static-python-skill
You can stick to python and generate mojo or rust or lean.
There is more than one solution to the two language problem.
i think the main idea is that by using MLIR[1] instead of the usual LLVM path it can target gpus directly
Do you mean the Modular site or the Mojo site? https://mojolang.org/ makes some clear statements.
Their communication definitely needs work. I listened to the interview with Chris on the Lex Friedman podcast a few years ago. Back when the pitch still was "minimal python superset that allows us to make it go voom". It wasn't a bad pitch. But it's gotten a lot murkier since then apparently. And obviously pitching a new language just before world plus dog was about to switch to delegating programming work to AI agents wasn't great timing.
> "Qualcomm to Acquire Modular"
That's linked from their news section. If I read between the lines here what happened is the VC money ran out and they arranged some kind of acquihire. That obviously raises a lot of questions about what will happen to Mojo and the intentions around it. The merger was completed a few weeks ago so apparently this is a done deal. Them wrapping a ribbon around the 1.0 a few weeks later is a bit suggestive.
The modular front page reads like it was trying to pitch the whole thing as a competitor to other inference platforms like open router, replicate, bedrock, etc.
I'm sure there's more to it and that the tech was amazing. But the acquisition raises a lot of questions about the future of the whole thing. An OSS move at least would allow people to continue working on Mojo independently from Qualcomm. I assume some people in the team might be moving on post acquisition.