Compiler Podcast - Episode 2 • 2021 • Conference Guide • Handmade Seattle

0:00Opening titles

0:42Abner Coimbre: Welcome to the podcast

1:12Andrew Kelley: Hello

1:18Ginger Bill: Hello

1:27Mason Remaley: Hello

1:38AC: Briefly introduce Mason

1:48MR: Way of Rhea¹

2:19AC: Assign Mason as our Rust representative

2:53MR: Discovering and using Rust

5:16AC: How do you square the circle of enjoying two languages, Rust and Zig?

5:44MR: Advocating for multiple languages

6:18AC: Racing to replace C & C++

7:11AK: Making Zig strictly better than C, and possible to incrementally introduce²

8:08GB: No sense to replace C, scoping Odin to high performance modern systems programming

9:29AK: Scoping Zig to general purpose programming

10:11GB: Caveat Odin as also general-purpose, just for 32-bit and 64-bit platforms

11:44AC: What industries are Rust permeating?

11:54MR: Rust's potential for security-critical applications

12:31AC: What do you look for in a co-contributor, for Zig?

14:16AK: A desirable co-contributor: Keeping the big picture in mind and teamwork

15:52AC: So a big technical gap may be fine?

15:58AK: A student's willingness to learn

16:51MR: Willingness to sit down and do the work, to demystify problems

18:44GB: Range of skill-levels required of compiler development

19:38MR: Drawing on public knowledge

20:08GB: Semantic checking as the most complicated bit of a compiler

22:25AC: So semantic checking is where the magic happens?

22:44AK: A desirable co-contributor: Able to read and learn strategies from foreign codebases

23:37GB: Reading source code is a valuable skill

24:47AK: Reading the Clang codebase to implement Zig's "translate C" feature

25:22GB: Learning to write compilers by reading other ones

25:27MR: Getting answers from SDL code

26:00AC: Exceptions and error handling in general

27:46GB: Usage of exceptions

29:35AC: So it's a problem of user discipline?

30:07GB: Usage of exceptions: 1) Culture of passing up the stack

30:29GB: Usage of exceptions: 2) Treating "errors" as just different code paths

31:41AC: I don't think Odin supports exceptions

31:45GB: No exceptions in Odin

31:55AK: Is that a British saying, about the cows?

31:59GB: Yes

32:03AK: Pokémon programming

32:24AK: Error handling in Zig

35:09AC: It sounds like errors in Zig are a first-class thing

35:20MR: Popular error handling techniques: Returning error codes

37:04MR: Popular error handling techniques: Exceptions

40:43GB: Swift has a "throw" annotation

40:58GB: Zig's error type

42:12MR: Exception handling requires code maintaining a self-consistent state

45:20GB: More structured language construct, e.g. defer

46:00MR: In C we structure these things manually

46:58AC: Some companies disallow "goto"

47:14MR: Error code mismatches without type-safety

47:57GB: Odin's structured features implementing people's usage patterns of "goto"

49:16AC: Let's reduce your arguments on exceptions to a thumbs up / down

49:26GB: Thumbs down

49:31AK: Praise Walter Bright's humility for saying exceptions were a mistake

49:55MR: It takes a lot to change your mind. Thumbs down

50:20GB: Without D, Odin wouldn't have "scope exit"

50:59MR: When to Rewrite³

51:30GB: Virtually none of Odin's ideas are new

52:51AC: Inline assembly

53:50AK: Inline assembly in Zig

54:55MR: Rust supports inline assembly

55:32AC: New inline assembly syntax in Rust⁴

55:42MR: It is there

55:44GB: Rust uses GCC-style opaque string for inline assembly

56:23GB: Inline assembly in Odin

59:05AC: Confusion of AT&T vs Intel assembly operand order

59:39GB: Unifying assembly dialects in Odin

1:00:25AK: Difficulty making Intel syntax the only dialect in Zig

1:00:37GB: Preferring AT&T syntax

1:00:52AC: Is Zig aiming to streamline the assembly experience?

1:00:59AK: Unifying assembly dialects in Zig

1:01:28AC: That's curious

1:01:30MR: Rust's assembly syntax roughly matches that of GCC and Clang⁵

1:01:59GB: Executing machine code in python

1:02:28MR: Generating bytecode in Rust

1:03:15AC: Let's talk about community building

1:04:20GB: Closed vs open development models

1:05:45GB: Odin's open development model

1:08:03AK: On not having enough time for Zig to not be open source

1:09:28GB: Needing to manage community involvement

1:10:27MR: Little scripting language's closed development model

1:12:46AC: Was Rust open source early on?

1:12:49GB: Rust and Go probably began closed before becoming open

1:13:28GB: Managing open vs closed source development

1:15:34AC: Is Zig and Odin development similarly hierarchical?

1:15:37AK: Zig's development hierarchy

1:16:06GB: Odin's development hierarchy

1:17:02AK: Jakub's linker expertise in Zig

1:17:43GB: Odin's language server, written by someone else

1:18:14AC: Helping demystify computers at a low level for learners

1:20:34AK: Recommend "nand2tetris"⁶

1:21:13AC: Nice

1:21:18MR: Recommend "Crafting Interpreters"⁷

1:21:37MR: Encouraging people to write working software, rather than "good code"

1:24:51AK: "Together we serve the users"

1:25:05MR: That's definitely catchier

1:25:07GB: No need to be catchy

1:26:27AC: Welcoming in people at the outer edges of affinity with our subject

1:27:36MR: Different people's demotivation by societal treatment

1:29:34GB: Ideas spreading through seeming to be good

1:30:25MR: Feeling allowed to be critical of "best practices"

1:31:26GB: The folly of trying to find a shortcut to wisdom in the young field of programming

1:32:10MR: Helping to get people unstuck

1:32:40GB: Everyone gets stuck

1:33:13AK: Do not cargo cult advice from "experts", but understand it

1:33:27GB: Wish for evolved, pre-subscribed dogmas

1:34:08AC: Anything to add, Andrew?

1:34:15AK: Putting googly eyes on textbooks, to make low-level programming cool

1:34:34AC: Thank you, everyone

1:34:40MR: Plug "Way of Rhea"⁸

1:34:54AC: And, Andrew, how do people find Zig?

1:34:58AK: Plug Zig⁹

1:35:00AC: What about Ginger?

1:35:04GB: Plug Odin¹⁰

1:35:16AC: Excellent, thank you

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