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See also, Julia's home page: https://julialang.org/ https://julialang.org/ I toyed around with it for a while, and really liked it. I wondered to myself "what

See also, Julia's home page: https://julialang.org/ https://julialang.org/ I toyed around with it for a while, and really liked it. I wondered to myself "what makes this language specific to numerical computing? it seems generic enough to be used wherever I'd want to use Ruby or Haskell..." But then I tried using it. And even though the language is generic enough, the standard library just plain assumes you're only doing numerical computing, and makes everything else needlessly hard by trivial omissions. That was like 2013 though, so maybe things are different now?

gravypod 11y ago
I was really REALLY interested in the language due to the clustering ability and their JIT they build into it. But it does seem like the language was build without any systems-usage in mind. How sad. Nothing will ever quench my thirst for clustering.
- vegabook 11y ago
  so... it was built for clustering but it doesn't quench your thirst for clustering? Please could you clarify.
  - rspeer 11y ago
    The meaning was clear to me. It doesn't quench his thirst because he has chosen not to use it.
    - gravypod 11y ago
      Yes. It is that I cannot use it for things that I'd like.
KenoFischer 11y ago
While numerical computing is the first target, that's definitely not the sole goal of the language, so if there's something simple that you feel is missing, I would be very curious to know what that is.
skybrian 11y ago
It seems to be offline.
- KenoFischer 11y ago
  HTTP site is up. It's hosted on Github Pages so HTTPS may not work.
noam87 11y ago
Interesting, I've had the opposite reaction. I find it to be about the nicest programming language to work with. I even started writing a little toy database in Julia, and find it really easy to reason about. Package management system is its only weak point IMO. It makes a lot of counter-intuitive decisions (having to build a package from the packages directory? that's just strange). Cargo / Bundler to me feel like the gold standard in package management... most alternatives I've seen would be better off just copying those workflows unless there's a really good reason to try something new.
jernfrost 11y ago
I haven't used Julia for any big projects but I routinely use it for small projects or utilities. I have used it for: 1) Obfuscating source code 2) Reading and presenting iOS provisioning profile data 3) Simple social science related simulations ported from Ruby or Python. 4) Code completion plugin for TextMate etc So no huge projects, but I found Julia to be a very nice and versatile language to work in. I find I can write code which is clearer than its corresponding Python and Ruby version and which has less bugs because type info is a bit more explicit, but without getting too much in the way as is typical with statically typed languages. I tried Haskell for some of the same projects, but I got to say Haskell takes way longer time to get proficient in. For the stuff I did I also found the way the Julia type system worked, made code reuse much easier than Haskell. E.g. with the Julia Union type it was possible to define individual function across multiple specific types. E.g. I could make a particular implementation of f apply to type A, B and C, while another particular implementation of f applies to D and E. Function g could have a specific implementation of A and E. While another implementation of g is used for B and C.

gravypod 11y ago

I was really REALLY interested in the language due to the clustering ability and their JIT they build into it. But it does seem like the language was build without any systems-usage in mind. How sad. Nothing will ever quench my thirst for clustering.

vegabook 11y ago
so... it was built for clustering but it doesn't quench your thirst for clustering? Please could you clarify.
- rspeer 11y ago
  The meaning was clear to me. It doesn't quench his thirst because he has chosen not to use it.
  - gravypod 11y ago
    Yes. It is that I cannot use it for things that I'd like.

KenoFischer 11y ago

While numerical computing is the first target, that's definitely not the sole goal of the language, so if there's something simple that you feel is missing, I would be very curious to know what that is.

skybrian 11y ago

It seems to be offline.

KenoFischer 11y ago
HTTP site is up. It's hosted on Github Pages so HTTPS may not work.

noam87 11y ago

Interesting, I've had the opposite reaction. I find it to be about the nicest programming language to work with. I even started writing a little toy database in Julia, and find it really easy to reason about. Package management system is its only weak point IMO. It makes a lot of counter-intuitive decisions (having to build a package from the packages directory? that's just strange). Cargo / Bundler to me feel like the gold standard in package management... most alternatives I've seen would be better off just copying those workflows unless there's a really good reason to try something new.

jernfrost 11y ago

I haven't used Julia for any big projects but I routinely use it for small projects or utilities. I have used it for: 1) Obfuscating source code 2) Reading and presenting iOS provisioning profile data 3) Simple social science related simulations ported from Ruby or Python. 4) Code completion plugin for TextMate etc So no huge projects, but I found Julia to be a very nice and versatile language to work in. I find I can write code which is clearer than its corresponding Python and Ruby version and which has less bugs because type info is a bit more explicit, but without getting too much in the way as is typical with statically typed languages. I tried Haskell for some of the same projects, but I got to say Haskell takes way longer time to get proficient in. For the stuff I did I also found the way the Julia type system worked, made code reuse much easier than Haskell. E.g. with the Julia Union type it was possible to define individual function across multiple specific types. E.g. I could make a particular implementation of f apply to type A, B and C, while another particular implementation of f applies to D and E. Function g could have a specific implementation of A and E. While another implementation of g is used for B and C.