Chris Lattner is one of the most important engineers in modern computing. He created LLVM, MLIR, the Swift language, brought Google TPUs to market, and today is the founder and CEO of Modular, where he's reinventing infrastructure to make AI software portable.

I asked him about AI coding, open source, and the future of software engineering. Here is what I learned:

• 🧠 𝗘𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆 𝗲𝗻𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗿 𝗶𝘀 𝗮 𝗺𝗮𝗻𝗮𝗴𝗲𝗿 𝗻𝗼𝘄 — with AI handling more of the coding, engineers at every level must think like managers: what am I trying to achieve, what's the best way to do it, and how will this be maintained over time?

• ⚡ 𝗔𝗜 𝗶𝘀 𝗮𝗻 𝗮𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗶𝗳𝗶𝗲𝗿, 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗮 𝗿𝗲𝗽𝗹𝗮𝗰𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 — it makes good practices better and bad practices worse. If you have slow CI or no tests, AI will expose those gaps faster than ever.

• 🔓 𝗚𝗣𝗨𝘀 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗻𝗲𝘄 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗲𝗿 — 99% of engineers still program CPUs, but the real action is in accelerated compute. Just like Swift unlocked iPhone development beyond Objective-C experts, Modular aims to make GPU programming accessible to every developer.

• ⚠️ 𝗢𝗽𝗲𝗻 𝘀𝗼𝘂𝗿𝗰𝗲 𝗶𝘀 𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿 𝗽𝗿𝗲𝘀𝘀𝘂𝗿𝗲 — AI-generated slop is overrunning maintainers. Contributors invest less effort per PR, but reviewers face the same (or greater) burden. This risks cutting off the pipeline of new contributors growing into maintainers.

🪴 𝗕𝗲 𝗯𝘂𝗹𝗹𝗶𝘀𝗵 𝗼𝗻 𝗷𝘂𝗻𝗶𝗼𝗿 𝗲𝗻𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗿𝘀 — Chris is actively hiring new grads and interns. They're AI-native, adapt faster to new tools, and good teams need people at all levels learning from each other.

Chris was a dream guest and I am incredibly grateful to have had him on the show!