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I've been struggling with building a C++ library for astrodynamics simulations (anything involving the motion of objects in space) within my research group for

I've been struggling with building a C++ library for astrodynamics simulations (anything involving the motion of objects in space) within my research group for the last four year. The biggest problem is that for our applications, performance-wise a lot of high-level languages just don't cut it (particularly MATLAB, which is pushed down our throat from freshman year onwards). After some deliberation (and before Python really caught my eye) I opted for C++. That unfortunately brings with it an incredibly steep learning curve for new students who typically aren't interested in programming, but just want to get to the fun space mission analysis stuff. As a result, the project has grown a lot, but interest is waning. Julia seems like the ideal blend between high-level and high-performance. As a general question, is Julia Studio the best way to go about setting up a workflow? Or should I go with something like a Julia plugin for Sublime Text (which I believe exists). Or are there any other tools out there that make Julia dev straightforward?

ihnorton 13y ago
Regarding workflow, the best option is IJulia (https://github.com/JuliaLang/IJulia.jl https://github.com/JuliaLang/IJulia.jl) which has nice integration with plotting and useful things like LaTeX. Vi and Emacs are well-supported, and I know the Sublime tools have gotten a lot of attention from several people. Not directly related to performance, but you might be interested in this: https://github.com/helgee/JPLEphemeris.jl https://github.com/helgee/JPLEphemeris.jl
- kartikkumar 13y ago
  Very cool, thanks for the tips! That JPL Ephemeris library has given me an idea. I think I might try porting over the NAIF Spice [1] toolkit to Julia. It has MATLAB, IDL, C and FORTRAN ports so I think Julia would fit right in there. [1] http://naif.jpl.nasa.gov/naif/ http://naif.jpl.nasa.gov/naif/
RivieraKid 13y ago
I just use Sublime Text and often copy/paste or include("code.jl") to REPL. I use Eclipse for Java development, but I just don't see a lot of added value for a Julia IDE.

ihnorton 13y ago

Regarding workflow, the best option is IJulia (https://github.com/JuliaLang/IJulia.jl https://github.com/JuliaLang/IJulia.jl) which has nice integration with plotting and useful things like LaTeX. Vi and Emacs are well-supported, and I know the Sublime tools have gotten a lot of attention from several people. Not directly related to performance, but you might be interested in this: https://github.com/helgee/JPLEphemeris.jl https://github.com/helgee/JPLEphemeris.jl

kartikkumar 13y ago
Very cool, thanks for the tips! That JPL Ephemeris library has given me an idea. I think I might try porting over the NAIF Spice [1] toolkit to Julia. It has MATLAB, IDL, C and FORTRAN ports so I think Julia would fit right in there. [1] http://naif.jpl.nasa.gov/naif/ http://naif.jpl.nasa.gov/naif/

RivieraKid 13y ago

I just use Sublime Text and often copy/paste or include("code.jl") to REPL. I use Eclipse for Java development, but I just don't see a lot of added value for a Julia IDE.