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(I should preface this by saying that my claims are all based on what I see in a specific scientific community and US laboratory environment. I can't say for su

(I should preface this by saying that my claims are all based on what I see in a specific scientific community and US laboratory environment. I can't say for sure my observations are true more generally.) I think what you say is true in principle, basically on all counts, but Fortran's niche that its advantages serve best has been continually eaten away at by the Python/C++ combination. The "I don't know pointers" crowd steers toward Python, and the "I care about CPU cycles" crowd steers toward C++, and that relationship is symbiotic. Julia promised to be a general-purpose language, both as fast (or faster) than Fortran/C++ and as easy (or easier) than Fortran/Python. But it doesn't seem to have panned out as they'd perhaps have hoped.

pjmlp 3y ago
Looking at Julia Computing industry partners, it isn't that bad.
sundarurfriend 3y ago
Fortran still has a big fanbase and people actively fighting to keep it alive and thriving as much as possible. Maybe the crown will remain with C++ (in terms of fast languages), and maybe Rust will eat some of its lunch, but there seems to be a resurgence in the Fortran community to make sure it remains an important language in this space. Julia has something similar but to a lesser degree. Its main problem has been the developer experience - the latencies (slowly getting better), lack of a great editor/LSP experience (the VS Code plugin is decent, but not yet great), lack of accessible how-to resources (people are starting to write more of these), and things like that.
jki275 3y ago
I don't think Julia has been around quite long enough to make that statement yet. I've just noticed it's now available on the system I work with, which puts it in the frame for a possible (probably far out still)future move for a massive C/Fortran codebase I maintain. My general default if I'm going to update something is C++, but from what I see of Julia it's at least worth a look.
goerz 3y ago
How has it “not panned out”? Julia has been in a useable state only for a few years, and is still rapidly developing. Prior to Julia 1.0, I would have said Fortran (which I have 15 years experience with) was the most productive language for scientific computing. Today, Julia is, by a wide margin. In fact, our benchmarks show Julia matching or beating Fortran’s performance, to say nothing of the mich increased flexibility.

pjmlp 3y ago

Looking at Julia Computing industry partners, it isn't that bad.

sundarurfriend 3y ago

Fortran still has a big fanbase and people actively fighting to keep it alive and thriving as much as possible. Maybe the crown will remain with C++ (in terms of fast languages), and maybe Rust will eat some of its lunch, but there seems to be a resurgence in the Fortran community to make sure it remains an important language in this space. Julia has something similar but to a lesser degree. Its main problem has been the developer experience - the latencies (slowly getting better), lack of a great editor/LSP experience (the VS Code plugin is decent, but not yet great), lack of accessible how-to resources (people are starting to write more of these), and things like that.

jki275 3y ago

I don't think Julia has been around quite long enough to make that statement yet. I've just noticed it's now available on the system I work with, which puts it in the frame for a possible (probably far out still)future move for a massive C/Fortran codebase I maintain. My general default if I'm going to update something is C++, but from what I see of Julia it's at least worth a look.

goerz 3y ago

How has it “not panned out”? Julia has been in a useable state only for a few years, and is still rapidly developing. Prior to Julia 1.0, I would have said Fortran (which I have 15 years experience with) was the most productive language for scientific computing. Today, Julia is, by a wide margin. In fact, our benchmarks show Julia matching or beating Fortran’s performance, to say nothing of the mich increased flexibility.