{"id":35091,"date":"2022-02-22T15:24:05","date_gmt":"2022-02-22T20:24:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=35091"},"modified":"2022-02-22T15:33:11","modified_gmt":"2022-02-22T20:33:11","slug":"why-latter-left-the-swift-core-team","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2022\/02\/22\/why-latter-left-the-swift-core-team\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Lattner Left the Swift Core Team"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chris Lattner<\/a> (Hacker News<\/a>):<\/p>\n

To answer your question, the root cause of my decision to leave the core team is a toxic environment in the meetings themselves. The catalyst was a specific meeting last summer: after being insulted and yelled at over WebEx (not for the first time, and not just one core team member), I decided to take a break. I was able to get leadership to eventually discuss the situation with me last Fall, but after avoiding dealing with it, they made excuses, and made it clear they weren’t planning to do anything about it. As such, I decided not to return. They reassure me they “want to make sure things are better for others in the future based on what we talked about” though.<\/p>

On Swift Evolution, my original intention was to continue participating in the forums, but after several discussions generating more heat than light, when my formal proposal review comments and concerns were ignored by the unilateral accepts, and the general challenges with transparency working with core team, I decided that my effort was triggering the same friction with the same people, and thus I was just wasting my time.<\/p>

[…]<\/p>

It is obvious that Swift has outgrown my influence, and some of the design premises I care about (e.g. “simple things that compose”) don’t seem in vogue any more.<\/p>

[…]<\/p>

I think that Swift is a phenomenal language and has a long and successful future ahead, but it certainly isn’t a community designed language, and this isn’t ambiguous<\/a>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

I think many initially hoped that Lattner would have a BDFL sort of role, but after he left the company that became incompatible with Apple’s desire to drive the design in support of its private internal plans. At present, the only Core Team member from outside of Apple<\/a> seems to be Saleem Abdulrasool of Google Brain.<\/p>\n\n

Previously:<\/p>\n