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This is not a bad thing and it is quite natural considreing how young the language is. The same is true for golang and many other new cool languages. Being cons

by gozzoo 7y ago

This is not a bad thing and it is quite natural considreing how young the language is. The same is true for golang and many other new cool languages. Being conservative when introuducing features in a new language is a very wise approach.

The_rationalist 7y ago
This is natural indeed but it should be more frequently said, as I feel too many developers will go to the new shiny language and loose so many times because of what I call software poverty. (lack of libs, lack of features, lack of stackoverflow, lack of documentation, and even lack of stability) Indeed new languages have new shiny features but they do not outweigh the poverty cost. Especially since there are modern languages compatible with big ecosystems like typescript or kotlin, I don't really see how new languages that are not compatible can be competitive.
- gilbertmpanga12 7y ago
  Software poverty - Love the term.
- nnq 7y ago
  > modern languages compatible with big ecosystems like typescript or kotlin ...if you do anything towards ML or datascience, typescript and kotlin are the poor relatives. For most tasks 90% of the ecosystem is useless to you and you can spend more time wrangling the dependencies of a nasty nodejs package than quickly coding smth from scratch. That "richness" is also... "garbage".
- elcritch 7y ago
  If the language fills a niche sufficiently better than existing ones. Julia doesn’t bring too many novel concepts (JIT, macros, multimethods, parallelism) but ties them together nicely for scientific computing. The best chance Julia has isn’t attracting average devs alone, but the library developers. Writing new python libraries for research purposes often requires writing C/C++ code. There’s already a number of Julia libraries focusing on interesting research topics in scientific, mathematics, and AI. Those lead to better and more useful libraries over time which can interact over time. Plus Julia Computing seems to be going towards building a successful commercial side of Julia. Personally I don’t find the software poverty thing much of an issue, outside a few core areas (database drivers, basic http, c interop, networking, text editors).
- Sean1708 7y ago
  > I don't really see how new languages that are not compatible can be competitive. What exactly would you like Julia to be compatible with? Python? https://github.com/JuliaPy/PyCall.jl https://github.com/JuliaPy/PyCall.jl JS? https://github.com/SimonDanisch/JSCall.jl https://github.com/SimonDanisch/JSCall.jl C++? https://github.com/JuliaInterop/Cxx.jl https://github.com/JuliaInterop/Cxx.jl Java? https://github.com/JuliaInterop/JavaCall.jl https://github.com/JuliaInterop/JavaCall.jl R? https://github.com/JuliaInterop/RCall.jl https://github.com/JuliaInterop/RCall.jl Not all of these are fully polished, but they're all being worked on (plus there are a bunch of others that aren't being actively worked on that I haven't put here).
  - oxinabox 7y ago
    Mathematica? https://github.com/JuliaInterop/MathLink.jl https://github.com/JuliaInterop/MathLink.jl Matlab? https://github.com/JuliaInterop/MATLAB.jl https://github.com/JuliaInterop/MATLAB.jl C/Fortran anything else that compiles to C-API supporting shared libraries is supported in built by `ccall` JuliaLang is amazing at of FFI

by gozzoo 7y ago

The_rationalist 7y ago

This is natural indeed but it should be more frequently said, as I feel too many developers will go to the new shiny language and loose so many times because of what I call software poverty. (lack of libs, lack of features, lack of stackoverflow, lack of documentation, and even lack of stability) Indeed new languages have new shiny features but they do not outweigh the poverty cost. Especially since there are modern languages compatible with big ecosystems like typescript or kotlin, I don't really see how new languages that are not compatible can be competitive.

gilbertmpanga12 7y ago
Software poverty - Love the term.
nnq 7y ago
> modern languages compatible with big ecosystems like typescript or kotlin ...if you do anything towards ML or datascience, typescript and kotlin are the poor relatives. For most tasks 90% of the ecosystem is useless to you and you can spend more time wrangling the dependencies of a nasty nodejs package than quickly coding smth from scratch. That "richness" is also... "garbage".
elcritch 7y ago
If the language fills a niche sufficiently better than existing ones. Julia doesn’t bring too many novel concepts (JIT, macros, multimethods, parallelism) but ties them together nicely for scientific computing. The best chance Julia has isn’t attracting average devs alone, but the library developers. Writing new python libraries for research purposes often requires writing C/C++ code. There’s already a number of Julia libraries focusing on interesting research topics in scientific, mathematics, and AI. Those lead to better and more useful libraries over time which can interact over time. Plus Julia Computing seems to be going towards building a successful commercial side of Julia. Personally I don’t find the software poverty thing much of an issue, outside a few core areas (database drivers, basic http, c interop, networking, text editors).
Sean1708 7y ago
> I don't really see how new languages that are not compatible can be competitive. What exactly would you like Julia to be compatible with? Python? https://github.com/JuliaPy/PyCall.jl https://github.com/JuliaPy/PyCall.jl JS? https://github.com/SimonDanisch/JSCall.jl https://github.com/SimonDanisch/JSCall.jl C++? https://github.com/JuliaInterop/Cxx.jl https://github.com/JuliaInterop/Cxx.jl Java? https://github.com/JuliaInterop/JavaCall.jl https://github.com/JuliaInterop/JavaCall.jl R? https://github.com/JuliaInterop/RCall.jl https://github.com/JuliaInterop/RCall.jl Not all of these are fully polished, but they're all being worked on (plus there are a bunch of others that aren't being actively worked on that I haven't put here).
- oxinabox 7y ago
  Mathematica? https://github.com/JuliaInterop/MathLink.jl https://github.com/JuliaInterop/MathLink.jl Matlab? https://github.com/JuliaInterop/MATLAB.jl https://github.com/JuliaInterop/MATLAB.jl C/Fortran anything else that compiles to C-API supporting shared libraries is supported in built by `ccall` JuliaLang is amazing at of FFI