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It's certainly faster: http://julialang.org/benchmarks/ http://julialang.org/benchmarks/. It is free/open source. And, it benefits from being a younger languag

It's certainly faster: http://julialang.org/benchmarks/ http://julialang.org/benchmarks/. It is free/open source. And, it benefits from being a younger language and therefore has the hindsight of the quirks in Matlab's design. Coming from Python, the 1-indexed arrays are annoying but it's great for math.

sghodas 11y ago
The 1-indexed arrays can sometimes be nice, but I've run into bugs so many times when translating the code into a language with 0-indexed arrays.
- tptacek 11y ago
  That's interesting, because the 1-indexed arrays are primary the primary reason I don't ever seriously consider using Julia (or Lua); I can only shudder and imagine the obnoxious number of off-by-one mistakes I'd make.
  - jernfrost 11y ago
    I think this is a mental block people have. I grew up on zero based arrays in C, but I can't say this has caused me any issues thus far using Julia. I don't know how it is for others but for me I just into this mode where I think about Julia as doing math and I know in math you start at 1 for vectors and matrices. Besides the way functions and APIs work, you seldom have to write code that really depends on the start index.
  - CyberDildonics 11y ago
    What you are saying is conjecture if you haven't tried Julia or Lua. The reality is that 1 based indexing is trivial compared to the difficulties of a complex program.
  - ced 11y ago
    Out of curiosity, assuming that Julia magically had 0-indexed arrays, what would you use it for?
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - matt4077 11y ago
    Yeah, it just feels wrong. Of course that's just habit and in fact starting counts at 1 is actually the more user-centric way of doing it. I wish I could get used to Julia but for some reason I just think the source looks..ugly. Maybe it's my dark past with php that makes me shudder at the sight of avg(x) (instead of x.avg). I know that's stupid (and the syntax is actually required for multiple dispatch). Maybe Julia and I should try couples' therapy.
  - Avshalom 11y ago
    On the other hand having cut my teeth programming in MATLAB and lua 1-based indexing is on of the things that endears Julia to me.
  - simonster 11y ago
    If I can switch between programming languages that use 0-based and 1-based indexing without getting confused, surely you could too. If you don't think that learning to use 1-based indexing is worth it, that's fair enough, but it's pretty low on my list of things that give me trouble when I translate code between languages.
  - jhbadger 11y ago
    Basically every mathematical/data science language uses 1-based arrays -- R, MATLAB, and Mathematica in addition to Julia. Probably because traditionally (and to a degree even now) the standard numerical language was FORTRAN.

sghodas 11y ago

The 1-indexed arrays can sometimes be nice, but I've run into bugs so many times when translating the code into a language with 0-indexed arrays.

tptacek 11y ago
That's interesting, because the 1-indexed arrays are primary the primary reason I don't ever seriously consider using Julia (or Lua); I can only shudder and imagine the obnoxious number of off-by-one mistakes I'd make.
- jernfrost 11y ago
  I think this is a mental block people have. I grew up on zero based arrays in C, but I can't say this has caused me any issues thus far using Julia. I don't know how it is for others but for me I just into this mode where I think about Julia as doing math and I know in math you start at 1 for vectors and matrices. Besides the way functions and APIs work, you seldom have to write code that really depends on the start index.
- CyberDildonics 11y ago
  What you are saying is conjecture if you haven't tried Julia or Lua. The reality is that 1 based indexing is trivial compared to the difficulties of a complex program.
- ced 11y ago
  Out of curiosity, assuming that Julia magically had 0-indexed arrays, what would you use it for?
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- matt4077 11y ago
  Yeah, it just feels wrong. Of course that's just habit and in fact starting counts at 1 is actually the more user-centric way of doing it. I wish I could get used to Julia but for some reason I just think the source looks..ugly. Maybe it's my dark past with php that makes me shudder at the sight of avg(x) (instead of x.avg). I know that's stupid (and the syntax is actually required for multiple dispatch). Maybe Julia and I should try couples' therapy.
- Avshalom 11y ago
  On the other hand having cut my teeth programming in MATLAB and lua 1-based indexing is on of the things that endears Julia to me.
- simonster 11y ago
  If I can switch between programming languages that use 0-based and 1-based indexing without getting confused, surely you could too. If you don't think that learning to use 1-based indexing is worth it, that's fair enough, but it's pretty low on my list of things that give me trouble when I translate code between languages.
- jhbadger 11y ago
  Basically every mathematical/data science language uses 1-based arrays -- R, MATLAB, and Mathematica in addition to Julia. Probably because traditionally (and to a degree even now) the standard numerical language was FORTRAN.