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Notably, all of those are static languages and none of them have array types as nice as PyTorch or NumPy, among many other packages in the Python ecosystem. Tho

by oivey 3y ago

Notably, all of those are static languages and none of them have array types as nice as PyTorch or NumPy, among many other packages in the Python ecosystem. Those two facts are likely closely related.

samatman 3y ago
If only there were a dynamic language which performs comparably to C and Fortran, and was specifically designed to have excellent array processing facilities. Unfortunately, the closest thing we have to that is Julia, which fails to meet none of the requirements. Alas.
- rmbyrro 3y ago
  If only there was a car that could fly, but was still as easy and cheap to buy and maintain :D
abdullahkhalids 3y ago
Python is just the more popular language. Julia array manipulation is mostly better (better syntax, better integration, larger standard library) or as good as python. Julia is also dynamically typed. It is also faster than Python, except for the jit issues.
- oivey 3y ago
  Preaching to the choir here. Julia’s threading API is really nice. One deficiency is that it can be tricky to maintain type stability across tasks / fetches.
- znpy 3y ago
  > It is also faster than Python, except for the jit issues. I was intrigued by Julia a while ago, but didn't have time to properly learn it. So just out of curiosity: what's the issues with jit and Julia ?
  - jakobnissen 3y ago
    Julia's JIT compiles code when its first executed, so Julia has a noticable delay from you start the program and until it starts running. This is anywhere from a few hundred milliseconds for small scripts, to tens of seconds or even minutes for large packages.
    - shiroiushi 3y ago
      I wonder why they don't just have an optional pre-compilation, so once you have a version you're happy with and want to run in production, you just have a fully compiled version of the code that you run.
      - aoanla 3y ago
        Effectively, it does - one of the things recent releases of Julia have done is to add more precompilation caching on package install. Julia 1.10 feels considerably snappier than 1.0 as a result - that "first time to plot" is now only a couple of seconds thanks to this (and subsequent plots are, of course, much faster than that).
  - cjalmeida 3y ago
    The "issue" is Julia is not Just-in-Time, but a "Just-Ahead-of-Time" language. This means code is compiled before getting executed, and this can get expensive for interactive use. The famous "Time To First Plot" problem was about taking several minutes to do something like `using Plots; Plots.plot(sin)`. But to be fair recent Julia releases improved a lot of it, the code above in Julia 1.10 takes 1.5s on my 3-year old laptop

by oivey 3y ago

samatman 3y ago

If only there were a dynamic language which performs comparably to C and Fortran, and was specifically designed to have excellent array processing facilities. Unfortunately, the closest thing we have to that is Julia, which fails to meet none of the requirements. Alas.

rmbyrro 3y ago
If only there was a car that could fly, but was still as easy and cheap to buy and maintain :D

abdullahkhalids 3y ago

Python is just the more popular language. Julia array manipulation is mostly better (better syntax, better integration, larger standard library) or as good as python. Julia is also dynamically typed. It is also faster than Python, except for the jit issues.

oivey 3y ago
Preaching to the choir here. Julia’s threading API is really nice. One deficiency is that it can be tricky to maintain type stability across tasks / fetches.
znpy 3y ago
> It is also faster than Python, except for the jit issues. I was intrigued by Julia a while ago, but didn't have time to properly learn it. So just out of curiosity: what's the issues with jit and Julia ?
- jakobnissen 3y ago
  Julia's JIT compiles code when its first executed, so Julia has a noticable delay from you start the program and until it starts running. This is anywhere from a few hundred milliseconds for small scripts, to tens of seconds or even minutes for large packages.
  - shiroiushi 3y ago
    I wonder why they don't just have an optional pre-compilation, so once you have a version you're happy with and want to run in production, you just have a fully compiled version of the code that you run.
    - aoanla 3y ago
      Effectively, it does - one of the things recent releases of Julia have done is to add more precompilation caching on package install. Julia 1.10 feels considerably snappier than 1.0 as a result - that "first time to plot" is now only a couple of seconds thanks to this (and subsequent plots are, of course, much faster than that).
- cjalmeida 3y ago
  The "issue" is Julia is not Just-in-Time, but a "Just-Ahead-of-Time" language. This means code is compiled before getting executed, and this can get expensive for interactive use. The famous "Time To First Plot" problem was about taking several minutes to do something like `using Plots; Plots.plot(sin)`. But to be fair recent Julia releases improved a lot of it, the code above in Julia 1.10 takes 1.5s on my 3-year old laptop