> You could make the argument that this well-understood process could be broken out into its own class/package/module and tested with its own public interface, but if there really is only one consumer then that's kind of a strange trade-off to make in many cases.
That's how I develop in general: a "component" does not exist because it has multiple-clients, but because it is a conceptual piece of logic that makes sense to document and test in isolation. It allows to define what is the public API of this component and what isn't. This is how software scales and stays maintainable over time IMO.
There is something to be said about individual productivity (whatever that means in a very innovative/creative environment) vs team/company output, just today I saw this in my feed: https://flocrivello.com/changing-my-mind-on-remote-about-bei...
And that's coming from someone who actually tried to build a business out of remote work (TeamFlow was the product).
I can be much more productive at home when it is about my individual contribution (me coding to deliver something unambiguous), but xxx individuals doing this does not necessarily align into a great product: that does not scale.
They claim they are writing the actual kernel code (as in the implementation of a matmul) with it, and it was presented as a "system programming language": this goes far beyond "high-level tasks" it seems.
It depends what you mean by "new subsystem" and "transitioning to": what seems like a given is that the notion of "one size fits all" of LLVM IR is behind us and the need to multi-level IR is embraced.
LLVM IR is evolving to accommodate this better, within reason (that is: it stay organized around a pretty well defined core instruction set and type system), and MLIR is just the fully extensible framework beyond this.
It is to be seen if anyone would have the appetite to port LLVM IR (and the LLVM framework) to be a dialect, I think there are challenges for this.
In case you haven't tried it yet, Pythran is an interesting one to play with: https://pythran.readthedocs.io
Also, not compiling to C but to native code still would be Mojo: https://www.modular.com/max/mojo