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If you take a look at the features (esp. macros and multiple dispatch) you can see that is readily extensible for lots of applications. Thus the reason it is al

If you take a look at the features (esp. macros and multiple dispatch) you can see that is readily extensible for lots of applications. Thus the reason it is also sold as a "general purpose" language. Additonally, the very good support for threading and multiprocessing means it has a good future with services, async IO, and with event-loop web servers (a la node.js and friends). Finally, the focus on fast speed for numerical computation is particularly suited to games (as is the support for threading).

jacobolus 9y ago
> good future with services, async IO, and with event-loop web servers [...] particularly suited to games This all seems extremely unlikely (compared to e.g. widespread success in scientific computing, which is still far from assured). Good luck though.
moomin 9y ago
This sounds like a small thing, but with 1-based arrays, I'd bet more on it taking share from MatLab/R than from Rust or Java.
- dangjc 9y ago
  I didn't think 1 based arrays would be a big deal, but whenever I try to port code from Julia to almost any other environment (C++, python/numpy, scala, JS), it becomes one of the hardest things to reason about quickly and correctly.
  - ScottPJones 9y ago
    1-based arrays, and column-major layout of arrays annoyed me at first, however, one of the beautiful things is that much of Julia is written in Julia. If you want 0-based (or arbitrary based!) arrays, then simply use the https://github.com/JuliaArrays/OffsetArrays.jl https://github.com/JuliaArrays/OffsetArrays.jl package, and PermutedDimArrays have been added to Base, to handle some of the issues of dealing with row-major (and other sorts of memory layout) matrices.
    - moomin 9y ago
      Doesn't this mean that instead you're now dealing with inconsistent data representations?
kronos29296 9y ago
Games are not going anywhere from a mostly C++ code base. New languages get adopted if they are too good to be true or they have enterprise adoption like Go. Even Python took 20 years to reach where it is now. Julia will take a long time to become a general programming language for all purposes. Scientific Computing is a realistic goal just like Golang is a realistic language with Enterprise adoption. It may not be the most elegant language like Lisp but it is practical. (People don't want the perfect solution but one that works most of the time) (P.S I am vaguely quoting this from some anecdote about a discussion on Lisp and C)

jacobolus 9y ago

> good future with services, async IO, and with event-loop web servers [...] particularly suited to games This all seems extremely unlikely (compared to e.g. widespread success in scientific computing, which is still far from assured). Good luck though.

moomin 9y ago

This sounds like a small thing, but with 1-based arrays, I'd bet more on it taking share from MatLab/R than from Rust or Java.

dangjc 9y ago
I didn't think 1 based arrays would be a big deal, but whenever I try to port code from Julia to almost any other environment (C++, python/numpy, scala, JS), it becomes one of the hardest things to reason about quickly and correctly.
- ScottPJones 9y ago
  1-based arrays, and column-major layout of arrays annoyed me at first, however, one of the beautiful things is that much of Julia is written in Julia. If you want 0-based (or arbitrary based!) arrays, then simply use the https://github.com/JuliaArrays/OffsetArrays.jl https://github.com/JuliaArrays/OffsetArrays.jl package, and PermutedDimArrays have been added to Base, to handle some of the issues of dealing with row-major (and other sorts of memory layout) matrices.
  - moomin 9y ago
    Doesn't this mean that instead you're now dealing with inconsistent data representations?

kronos29296 9y ago

Games are not going anywhere from a mostly C++ code base. New languages get adopted if they are too good to be true or they have enterprise adoption like Go. Even Python took 20 years to reach where it is now. Julia will take a long time to become a general programming language for all purposes. Scientific Computing is a realistic goal just like Golang is a realistic language with Enterprise adoption. It may not be the most elegant language like Lisp but it is practical. (People don't want the perfect solution but one that works most of the time) (P.S I am vaguely quoting this from some anecdote about a discussion on Lisp and C)