Today’s guest is Chris Lattner, one of the most important engineers for modern computing. Chris invented key compiler infrastructure tech like LLVM and MLIR, but he’s also the inventor of the Swift language, a key contributor in bringing Google TPUs to market, and a lot more. Today he’s the founder and CEO of Modular, where he’s reinventing AI infrastructure to make software portable across GPUs and platforms.

So with Chris, we talked about his vision for AI and computing. We talked about how Modular’s mission makes us closer to a future where AI is open and portable. And we talked about open source, how AI is both empowering and straining contributors, how it’s changing intellectual property, and what workflows we need to change as engineers.

And finally, we discussed how AI is changing software craftsmanship, how he’s bullish about junior engineers, and a lot more.

(00:00) Preview

(02:11) Introduction

(04:05) What is Modular?

(06:13) Sponsor break

(07:10) From CPU to GPU landscape

(10:46) Objective-C Swift analogy

(15:37) What is Modular for Chris?

(17:37) The love for building

(20:21) Chris' view on AI future

(23:48) AI and open source

(29:34) Figuring out new workflows

(31:22) On licenses and copyright

(33:42) High quality software

(35:21) Coding faster with AI

(41:27) The landscape of junior engineers

(48:22) AI amplifies the good and the bad

(52:21) Modular ceremonies

(55:26) Tech debt

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Today’s sponsor is Intent by Augment. Intent is a developer workspace built for orchestrating agents: it starts with the living spec that updates as agents make progress, so every task stays aligned with no manual coordination. Try it for yourself at https://www.augmentcode.com/product/intent

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• 🎧 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7Luds9dmzZDoDC8Q7EMbSw

• 📱 Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/refactoring-podcast/id1719137305

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For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, or appearing as a guest, email: luca@refactoring.club