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Stefan Karpinski (one of the core Julia contributors) gave a talk (in 2016, so rather dated as far as the Julia syntax and whatnot go) about how Julia is secret

Stefan Karpinski (one of the core Julia contributors) gave a talk (in 2016, so rather dated as far as the Julia syntax and whatnot go) about how Julia is secretly more lisp-y than even lisp & Scheme. The core of this argument is that most language specifications dedicate many pages to defining how arithmetic works, whereas Julia is actually just able to define that in Julia code as part of the stdlib (the implementation just calls out to LLVM intrinsics, but nonetheless, super neat!). `Int64` is actually defined in a Julia file. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dK3zRXhrFZY&t=2s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dK3zRXhrFZY&t=2s

JonChesterfield 4y ago
Defining parts of the language as executable code instead of prose is attractive. One drawback is over specification - the reference implementation may have inessential features that a prose version could leave to the implementor - but overall I think that risk is minor compared to having executable test cases/examples embedded in the standard. Arbitrary size integers written in lisp is a thing. Maybe gambit and sbcl? Can't remember offhand. Calling down to llvm.sum.i64 or w/e is very similar to calling down to x64.
crabbygrabby 4y ago
Julia's syntax is it's greatest strength but also it's biggest weakness. Large Julia code bases without team standards are complete soup. For small to medium size projects it's all good though. Just wish the community wasn't overall so crappy.
- travisd 4y ago
  What do you mean by crappy? I've always found it very lovely and welcoming (though a touch small). The Julia community is also (in my experience) skewed towards scientific computing rather than software engineers which can definitely have an impact on things like "codebase quality" even in big important libraries. That's not a dig or insult – there are different priorities (privileging exploration, innovation, new ideas, and code that only needs to work until the paper you're writing is done rather than long term maintainablity is not a fundamentally wrong tradeoff to make).
  - crabbygrabby 4y ago
    I met a guy who got kicked away from the community because he had different political beliefs than a lot of the people there. Immediately after he got the boot he stopped contributing, they took control of his two yrs of research(multiple repos). I get it, it's OSS but at the end of the day it kinda looks like stealing someone's work. There's other instances of stuff like this too... Just hang around for a while and watch... Not here to say it's all like that. But keep in mind if you aren't paying for the product, you probably are the product.
    - DNF2 4y ago
      There's only one person who's been kicked out of the community (in the sense of being banned from the discourse forum), and that was not due to 'political beliefs', but repeated abuse and personal attacks. Anyway, how can anyone 'take control' of someone's repositories? Was this person kicked out of github too?
      - crabbygrabby 4y ago
        They forked them. Also this is not that person. And there's more instances of this than I think you realize.
        DNF2 4y ago
        I don't know anyone else who got kicked out (that takes a lot). But I know of a situation where someone walked out due to a non-political disagreement. Perhaps that's the one. I follow the community pretty closely, posters being banned (except pure spam accounts) is something I think I'd notice. Besides, what can you do if someone walks away from an important package? Should everyone, including collaborators on that package just start from scratch? What?
        crabbygrabby 4y ago
        Can't reply to you depth of discussion got too long I think. Yea they didn't get kicked out entirely not banned or anything but they became "persona non grata" over stuff in their personal life. At least that's how it was explained to me. I dunno what you should do if someone leaves, but bullying someone until they leave, then after they do forking all their work is kinda crappy. Again I get that it's OSS, but a lot of people don't make OSS contributions and hope for that kind of outcome. It's worth putting out there imo.

JonChesterfield 4y ago

Defining parts of the language as executable code instead of prose is attractive. One drawback is over specification - the reference implementation may have inessential features that a prose version could leave to the implementor - but overall I think that risk is minor compared to having executable test cases/examples embedded in the standard. Arbitrary size integers written in lisp is a thing. Maybe gambit and sbcl? Can't remember offhand. Calling down to llvm.sum.i64 or w/e is very similar to calling down to x64.

crabbygrabby 4y ago

Julia's syntax is it's greatest strength but also it's biggest weakness. Large Julia code bases without team standards are complete soup. For small to medium size projects it's all good though. Just wish the community wasn't overall so crappy.

travisd 4y ago
What do you mean by crappy? I've always found it very lovely and welcoming (though a touch small). The Julia community is also (in my experience) skewed towards scientific computing rather than software engineers which can definitely have an impact on things like "codebase quality" even in big important libraries. That's not a dig or insult – there are different priorities (privileging exploration, innovation, new ideas, and code that only needs to work until the paper you're writing is done rather than long term maintainablity is not a fundamentally wrong tradeoff to make).
- crabbygrabby 4y ago
  I met a guy who got kicked away from the community because he had different political beliefs than a lot of the people there. Immediately after he got the boot he stopped contributing, they took control of his two yrs of research(multiple repos). I get it, it's OSS but at the end of the day it kinda looks like stealing someone's work. There's other instances of stuff like this too... Just hang around for a while and watch... Not here to say it's all like that. But keep in mind if you aren't paying for the product, you probably are the product.
  - DNF2 4y ago
    There's only one person who's been kicked out of the community (in the sense of being banned from the discourse forum), and that was not due to 'political beliefs', but repeated abuse and personal attacks. Anyway, how can anyone 'take control' of someone's repositories? Was this person kicked out of github too?
    - crabbygrabby 4y ago
      They forked them. Also this is not that person. And there's more instances of this than I think you realize.
      - DNF2 4y ago
        I don't know anyone else who got kicked out (that takes a lot). But I know of a situation where someone walked out due to a non-political disagreement. Perhaps that's the one. I follow the community pretty closely, posters being banned (except pure spam accounts) is something I think I'd notice. Besides, what can you do if someone walks away from an important package? Should everyone, including collaborators on that package just start from scratch? What?
      - crabbygrabby 4y ago
        Can't reply to you depth of discussion got too long I think. Yea they didn't get kicked out entirely not banned or anything but they became "persona non grata" over stuff in their personal life. At least that's how it was explained to me. I dunno what you should do if someone leaves, but bullying someone until they leave, then after they do forking all their work is kinda crappy. Again I get that it's OSS, but a lot of people don't make OSS contributions and hope for that kind of outcome. It's worth putting out there imo.