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Julia always seemed great on paper and definitely is a strong candidate for replacing Matlab. But whenever I tried using it, the user experience seemed much mor

Julia always seemed great on paper and definitely is a strong candidate for replacing Matlab. But whenever I tried using it, the user experience seemed much more broken than python or c++. It just seems way easier to structure and work on a python + c++ project than it is to structure and work on a Julia project. A moderately sized sane c++ code base compiles and runs faster than whatever gymnastics Julia performs to create a single 2d plot (literally freezes my laptop for seconds). It also installs gigabytes worth of libraries into global directories by default. The compiler itself is also of questionable quality compared to clang, Swift or Ocaml.

nslocum 7y ago
Julia is compiled using LLVM.
eigenspace 7y ago
Compiler latency is being actively worked on and a PR was just pushed to Plots.jl which halved the time to first plot for many users. Note that even before this though, it's just the compilation phase for the first plot that's expensive. Plotting itself is quite fast in julia, and if you start up julia with the command line argument `--compile=min` you'll see very very fast first plots. Obviously, this will come with a runtime performance cost though.
svnpenn 7y ago
> literally freezes my laptop for seconds Yep. This has been commented on again and again, but many refuse to show willingness to fix or even acknowledge the problem: https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia/issues/28092 https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia/issues/28092 https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia/issues/17285 https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia/issues/17285 https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia/issues/4452 https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia/issues/4452 https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia/issues/1064 https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia/issues/1064 https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia/issues/260 https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia/issues/260
- pkofod 7y ago
  What do you mean by "refuse to show willingness to fix or even acknowledge the problem"? Do you realize that two of those issues were started by core contributors?
mirekrusin 7y ago
clang, swift and julia are all based on llvm compiler toolchain. Ocaml has it's own compiler.
fspeech 7y ago
The particular attraction to me that Julia advertises is that it is much easier to read other people's Julia code. I recently tried Julia and found this to be quite true. It still lacks some critical features I need in the ML library but I can definitely see its attraction to users who want to understand the libraries they use.
ViralBShah 7y ago
The one thing Julia does not do is install gigabytes of libraries in global directories by default. The default install does not require root, and installs the packages and libraries in ~/.julia. How did you end up with libraries in global directories? Also, while we are working on reducing the time to first plot latency (which has to do with compiling large amounts of code - the time to second plot is 0.2sec), it would be good to learn more about the compiler quality issues you mention. We always welcome constructive comments on the Julia discourse.

nslocum 7y ago

Julia is compiled using LLVM.

eigenspace 7y ago

Compiler latency is being actively worked on and a PR was just pushed to Plots.jl which halved the time to first plot for many users. Note that even before this though, it's just the compilation phase for the first plot that's expensive. Plotting itself is quite fast in julia, and if you start up julia with the command line argument `--compile=min` you'll see very very fast first plots. Obviously, this will come with a runtime performance cost though.

svnpenn 7y ago

> literally freezes my laptop for seconds Yep. This has been commented on again and again, but many refuse to show willingness to fix or even acknowledge the problem: https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia/issues/28092 https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia/issues/28092 https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia/issues/17285 https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia/issues/17285 https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia/issues/4452 https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia/issues/4452 https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia/issues/1064 https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia/issues/1064 https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia/issues/260 https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia/issues/260

pkofod 7y ago
What do you mean by "refuse to show willingness to fix or even acknowledge the problem"? Do you realize that two of those issues were started by core contributors?

mirekrusin 7y ago

clang, swift and julia are all based on llvm compiler toolchain. Ocaml has it's own compiler.

fspeech 7y ago

The particular attraction to me that Julia advertises is that it is much easier to read other people's Julia code. I recently tried Julia and found this to be quite true. It still lacks some critical features I need in the ML library but I can definitely see its attraction to users who want to understand the libraries they use.

ViralBShah 7y ago

The one thing Julia does not do is install gigabytes of libraries in global directories by default. The default install does not require root, and installs the packages and libraries in ~/.julia. How did you end up with libraries in global directories? Also, while we are working on reducing the time to first plot latency (which has to do with compiling large amounts of code - the time to second plot is 0.2sec), it would be good to learn more about the compiler quality issues you mention. We always welcome constructive comments on the Julia discourse.