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Hmm...I wish they had taken a bit more time to dig into the situation with Julia than simply to note it moved from position 51 to 52 on the ranking (is that eve

Hmm...I wish they had taken a bit more time to dig into the situation with Julia than simply to note it moved from position 51 to 52 on the ranking (is that even a significant shift?). Having just come from giving a presentation at this year's JuliaCon, I am more optimistic about Julia's future than at any point in the past. I think what we're seeing here is that Julia is making a concerted push toward v1.0. It was announced at JuliaCon 2016 that they are targeting JuliaCon 2017 for the v1.0 release. It should be expected, then, that the break-neck pace of innovation has taken a back seat to a focus on stability, but based on what is already on the roadmap for Julia v2.0, I don't see Julia moving anywhere but up. (Also, I think the comparison to CoffeeScript is rather unfortunate. In my mind, CoffeeScript was primarily addressing shortcomings in JS that JS has, since, done quite a bit to rectify. Julia is not trying to be a better "X", so there's no "X" to steal away its momentum.)

tanlermin 10y ago
Do you see it replacing python for non DS? What is on Julia 2.0?
- ced 10y ago
  The juliacon videos are online. See here for Julia 2.0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gXMpbY1kJY&t=1250 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gXMpbY1kJY&t=1250
- jballanc 10y ago
  I think there's a general misconception that Julia is a DS/scientific programming focused language. It just so happens that these are areas where its advantages are most apparent, and give the biggest early wins. Given enough time, though, I think the paradigms that Julia is exploring will make it a killer general-purpose language. As for Julia 2.0, it was decided to put off implementation of traits and interfaces until then. That said, some of the ideas that were being bounced around during the post-con Hack day in these areas are really exciting. In short: Julia may be the first language to pull off behavioral typing in a practically usable way.
  - tanlermin 10y ago
    "Given enough time, though, I think the paradigms that Julia is exploring will make it a killer general-purpose language." I think its already a Killer general-purpose language (except for the module system). I'm just not sure if it is good enough to unseat incumbents when there are things like rust with its deterministic memory management or python with all its momentum and compiler technology coming along. Not sure whether to bet on it at this point.
    - jballanc 10y ago
      The thing about Julia is that it's playing a whole different ballgame than pretty much every other popular language today...it's just that most people don't realize it yet! The work and design that's gone into Julia's type system and multiple dispatch has the potential to be a real game-changer, but outside of a core community putting it to good use, I don't think it's potential has been fully realized. This is also why I'm excited by what's coming next in v2.0. Some of the early ideas being explored at JuliaCon with respect to traits and interfaces will begin to really shine a spotlight on its true power.
      - Xcelerate 10y ago
        > The thing about Julia is that it's playing a whole different ballgame than pretty much every other popular language today I've noticed this. I've been using it the past four years for much of my dissertation work (starting right when it was released). Julia's type system has the potential for some extremely cool things. I've been toying around with the idea of making a package that focuses on runtime static typing. This would be particularly useful when using the language interactively (like in a Jupyter notebook). The idea is to perform a check at runtime to make sure all variables in a function are assigned an immutable, concrete (non-abstract) type, and then compile an optimized version of that function on-the-fly . One source of pain in a lot of my Julia code is that unintentional type instability contributes to a lot of unnecessary performance penalties, and it takes quite a bit of poking and prodding before I figure out exactly which line is responsible. Forcing a check over the function would prevent these occurrences. I also seem to have the problem of inadvertently calling functions that allocate and deallocate tiny amounts of memory on the innermost for loops. (Then again, maybe nobody else has these issues and I'm just bad at deducing when AbstractVector can't be used.)
- pjmlp 10y ago
  I hope so, at least since they care about performance instead of outsourcing to C.
vegabook 10y ago
:%s/Julia/[your favourite challenger language]/g This is sample selection bias. Cavorting with converts at their conference is always going to lead to a temporary afterglow of bullishness and says nothing about adoption rates.
- tanlermin 10y ago
  But it discusses potential for being appealing in the future when things settle down and new features are added. Also apparently stackoverflow julia questions have clear exponential growth.
sogrady 10y ago
Setting aside the specific Julia functional merit questions, the answer is that in general, no, the difference between 51 and 52 is not particularly significant. That being said, the macro perspective - in which Julia is growing more slowly than other languages, or arguably not at all - is relevant for those wishing to see more adoption.

tanlermin 10y ago

Do you see it replacing python for non DS? What is on Julia 2.0?

ced 10y ago
The juliacon videos are online. See here for Julia 2.0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gXMpbY1kJY&t=1250 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gXMpbY1kJY&t=1250
jballanc 10y ago
I think there's a general misconception that Julia is a DS/scientific programming focused language. It just so happens that these are areas where its advantages are most apparent, and give the biggest early wins. Given enough time, though, I think the paradigms that Julia is exploring will make it a killer general-purpose language. As for Julia 2.0, it was decided to put off implementation of traits and interfaces until then. That said, some of the ideas that were being bounced around during the post-con Hack day in these areas are really exciting. In short: Julia may be the first language to pull off behavioral typing in a practically usable way.
- tanlermin 10y ago
  "Given enough time, though, I think the paradigms that Julia is exploring will make it a killer general-purpose language." I think its already a Killer general-purpose language (except for the module system). I'm just not sure if it is good enough to unseat incumbents when there are things like rust with its deterministic memory management or python with all its momentum and compiler technology coming along. Not sure whether to bet on it at this point.
  - jballanc 10y ago
    The thing about Julia is that it's playing a whole different ballgame than pretty much every other popular language today...it's just that most people don't realize it yet! The work and design that's gone into Julia's type system and multiple dispatch has the potential to be a real game-changer, but outside of a core community putting it to good use, I don't think it's potential has been fully realized. This is also why I'm excited by what's coming next in v2.0. Some of the early ideas being explored at JuliaCon with respect to traits and interfaces will begin to really shine a spotlight on its true power.
    - Xcelerate 10y ago
      > The thing about Julia is that it's playing a whole different ballgame than pretty much every other popular language today I've noticed this. I've been using it the past four years for much of my dissertation work (starting right when it was released). Julia's type system has the potential for some extremely cool things. I've been toying around with the idea of making a package that focuses on runtime static typing. This would be particularly useful when using the language interactively (like in a Jupyter notebook). The idea is to perform a check at runtime to make sure all variables in a function are assigned an immutable, concrete (non-abstract) type, and then compile an optimized version of that function on-the-fly . One source of pain in a lot of my Julia code is that unintentional type instability contributes to a lot of unnecessary performance penalties, and it takes quite a bit of poking and prodding before I figure out exactly which line is responsible. Forcing a check over the function would prevent these occurrences. I also seem to have the problem of inadvertently calling functions that allocate and deallocate tiny amounts of memory on the innermost for loops. (Then again, maybe nobody else has these issues and I'm just bad at deducing when AbstractVector can't be used.)
pjmlp 10y ago
I hope so, at least since they care about performance instead of outsourcing to C.

vegabook 10y ago

:%s/Julia/[your favourite challenger language]/g This is sample selection bias. Cavorting with converts at their conference is always going to lead to a temporary afterglow of bullishness and says nothing about adoption rates.

tanlermin 10y ago
But it discusses potential for being appealing in the future when things settle down and new features are added. Also apparently stackoverflow julia questions have clear exponential growth.

sogrady 10y ago

Setting aside the specific Julia functional merit questions, the answer is that in general, no, the difference between 51 and 52 is not particularly significant. That being said, the macro perspective - in which Julia is growing more slowly than other languages, or arguably not at all - is relevant for those wishing to see more adoption.