A case for learning GPU programming with a compute-first mindset

https://themaister.net/blog/2025/10/05/a-case-for-learning-gpu-programming-with-a-compute-first-mindset/

by todsacerdoti • 10 months ago

67 11 10 months ago

I understood everything up to

The debug flow I propose with RenderDoc will rely on a lot of shader replacements and roundtrips via SPIRV-Cross’ GLSL backend, so Vulkan GLSL is the appropriate language to start with.

Where, as someone who never did GPU programming, I feel like the author was explaining GPU programming to people who already know GPU programming.

wrs• 10 months ago

This seems to be some thoughts about an improved way to teach GPU programming to people who don't know it, so the audience for this is people who already do.

bsder2• 10 months ago

Vulkan GLSL is the appropriate language to start with.

GLSL is ABSOLUTELY NOT an appropriate language to start with anymore for a huge number of reasons, and I dearly wish people would quit using it for tutorials.

Anyone trying to get into GPU programming is going to be much, much more familiar programming in Slang which is effectively HLSL plus some stuff and HLSL is superficially like C++. As a bonus, you are learning a shader language actually used on Windows.

merksoftworks• 10 months ago

Agreed. I wish it was easier to embed the compiler in my favorite languages and reflect on it. Quite excited bout Wesl: https://github.com/wgsl-tooling-wg/wesl-rs.

fulafel2• 10 months ago

The caveats: Slang is a transpiled language so you're putting in extra abstraction layers, and there's a difference between what people commonly use for GPU programming in games/graphics vs general compute apps. For example people on AMD chips seem to be gravitating to Vulkan for LLM stuff now and Slang/HLSL are not involved.

codyb• 10 months ago

Thanks for writing this! I'm just getting into futzing with my Jetson Nano and it indeed is an entirely different space.

Excited to get into a bit and am bookmarking this guide for when I've got my basic setup going.

amelius• 10 months ago

(as opposed to graphics-first)

AntoineN2• 10 months ago

Not relevant but fun: https://store.steampowered.com/app/792100/7_Billion_Humans/

loosetypes• 10 months ago

Is this Human Resource Machine for GPUs rather than single core CPU assembly?

A case for learning GPU programming with a compute-first mindset

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