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Giving up on Julia

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Re: Giving up on Julia

#151

Post by lokedhs »

dragonwriter wrote: post #83
kazinator wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If distances used 1 based indexing: metric distance conversion chart: cm m km 1 1.00 1.00000 2 1.01 1.00001 3 1.02 1.00002 ... 101 2.00 1.00100 ... 100000 1000.99 1.99999 The ratios between the values aren't fixed now; we can't go from cm to m just by scaling by 100. We must subtract, scale then add. One based indexing falls apart if you have to index a region of storage as bits, bytes and words at the same time.

Distance doesn't use indexing at all, because measures are not indexes, so it doesn't make sense to say "if distances used 1-based indexing". OTOH, for something physical that actually is indexing, or at least closely analogous to it, we could ask "what if principal quantum numbers used 1-based indexing". But, then, the answer would be "things would look exactly like they do now, because it already does."

But that's the point, once you think of indexes as distance things make much more sense.

The index is the distance from the first element. Thus, the third element is two elements away from the first, thus it has index 2.

I think the only reason zero-based indexing is not the standard everywhere is because some people (usually non-programmers) have a problem with the idea that the fifth element has index four.

I am suggesting that this is a linguistic problem that has messed up programming.

Re: Giving up on Julia

#152

Post by bluecalm »

mindcrime wrote: post #140
bluecalm wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing about 1 based indexing is that it's a kind of in your face "this is different" decision from the point of view of a programmers of most popular languages. To be honest I wouldn't want to start investing my time into a language where people who proposed 1 based indexing are making design decisions. It's not that I think they are incompetent but it's clear they care way more about some different world than ab…

To be honest I wouldn't want to start investing my time into a language where people who proposed 1 based indexing are making design decisions. Possibly because you're used to working with languages like C, C++, Java, Pascal, Javascript, Python, etc. But in the world of languages tied closely to scientific / mathematical programming (Matlab/Octave, R, etc.) 1-based indexing is the norm. If you'd "grown up" so to spea…

Yes, my argument is purely about habits. 1-based indexing is a potent trap for programmers who are used to implementing stuff in 0-based indexing world.

Re: Giving up on Julia

#153

Post by sndean »

cozzyd wrote: post #135
sndean wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've found the Armadillo C++ library ( http://arma.sourceforge.net/ ) to be a better replacement, when concerned about speed.

IME eigen3 is even better (although the template-induced hellish compilation times are a huge pain).

I was going to say "but there's RcppArmadillo!" But now I see there's RcppEigen, too. I'll have to check it out.

Re: Giving up on Julia

#154

Post by bluecalm »

jules wrote: post #98
bluecalm wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing about 1 based indexing is that it's a kind of in your face "this is different" decision from the point of view of a programmers of most popular languages. To be honest I wouldn't want to start investing my time into a language where people who proposed 1 based indexing are making design decisions. It's not that I think they are incompetent but it's clear they care way more about some different world than ab…

Does 1 based indexing actually matter? It does if you are doing index arithmetic for rolling your own multidimensional arrays for example, but one shouldn't do those kind of things anyway.

There are tons of things which you need an index for when iterating over an array. Do something different for every 4th element but then something else if it's 16th. Keep doing something for triplets of elements unless you run into specific index which is divisible by 7, then start taking them one by one. Iterate but go 5 elements back if you encounter something in some state. There are a lot of algorithms which take advantage of array being an indexed data structure with an order and not just plain container without structure.

The problem doesn't just go away with for each style loops. Python added enumerate for this reason but it really is quite clumsy for anything more complicated (and you have to choose if it's indexing from 0 or 1 anyway).

Re: Giving up on Julia

#155

Post by dragonwriter »

bluecalm wrote: post #148
dnautics wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You shouldn't be so biased. Having one based indexing makes translating numerical recipes from pure math textbooks (where vectors and matrices are generally one-based) simpler and less error prone. I say this as someone who chafes at Julia's one based indexing as a matter of professional practice.

It's very error prone if you implemented algorithms using 0 based indexing your whole programming life. You are just bound to make mistakes if suddenly it's 1 based indexing. I am not saying 0 based indexing is technically superior (I really have no opinion on that). I could compare it to switching positions of brake and accelerator in a car - you can talk about brake on the right design being superior all you want b…

Of course, zero-based indexing is prone to error if you've grown up using natural language ordinals your whole life, and get business requirements based in them both of which are stunningly common of real developers and real development tasks.

Re: Giving up on Julia

#156

Post by SolarNet »

KenoFischer wrote: post #133
SolarNet wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember plenty of cases I got simply from observing the Julia repo for a few months, I could list them if you like... But I've been told by Julia contributors before that discussing this on HN is not an appropriate place. So we can discuss it, where I start linking to public examples on HN, or you can ignore my opinion on a problematic community and we can not discuss it. As to the code standards, my problem isn't…

> I remember plenty of cases I got simply from observing the Julia repo for a few months, I could list them if you like... But I've been told by Julia contributors before that discussing this on HN is not an appropriate place. So we can discuss it, where I start linking to public examples on HN, or you can ignore my opinion and we can not discuss it. I do think HN is not the right forum to link to individual comments…

> I do think HN is not the right forum to link to individual comments and call out people for their behavior.

Fair enough, my problem is that the project continually looses what appear to be serious contributors to a toxic developer (admittedly all second hand to me; but there are public examples and some private reports I have; including the person who first showed me Julia years ago). For all that it is an interesting language with plenty of problems I would enjoy fixing and taking the initiative on I simply don't have a desire to want to contribute. Again mostly due to politics. Which just sort of makes me bitter you fail to acknowledge the problems.

Like why should I take lots of time (I'm fine doing hard things like reading undocumented code bases if it's worth it (large sections of the core compiler code due to it's lack of comments or documentation are hard to read)) to help you fix technical problems, when you have social problems that are noticeable to anyone paying close enough attention to the community.

Also, thanks for taking the time to listen to my rants. I'm just disappointed.

Re: Giving up on Julia

#157

Post by rrock »

bluecalm wrote: post #148
dnautics wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You shouldn't be so biased. Having one based indexing makes translating numerical recipes from pure math textbooks (where vectors and matrices are generally one-based) simpler and less error prone. I say this as someone who chafes at Julia's one based indexing as a matter of professional practice.

It's very error prone if you implemented algorithms using 0 based indexing your whole programming life. You are just bound to make mistakes if suddenly it's 1 based indexing. I am not saying 0 based indexing is technically superior (I really have no opinion on that). I could compare it to switching positions of brake and accelerator in a car - you can talk about brake on the right design being superior all you want b…

This is exactly why all of my off by one errors happen in zero-based indexing languages. I need 1-based languages for data analysis, and 0-based languages for working on instrumentation.

Re: Giving up on Julia

#158

Post by developer2 »

Fomite wrote: post #109
jules wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does 1 based indexing actually matter? It does if you are doing index arithmetic for rolling your own multidimensional arrays for example, but one shouldn't do those kind of things anyway.

One thing to keep in mind is that scientific computing languages often have people using them who are not programmers, and who will not be "rolling their own multidimensional arrays." If they're used to R, MATLAB, or basically any statistics programming/scripting language ever, not only will they be expecting 1-based indexing, they might not even know that that's a thing they have to think about.

>> they be expecting 1-based indexing, they might not even know that that's a thing they have to think about

The truth of the matter is that this is not a point that anyone should ever mention as either a pro or con of any language. It's simply a fact that you're going to see one or the other, and it's useless to complain about which one is present in any given language. It's a one-time discovery as to which you're working with. People try to make it out to be a debilitating factor, when in reality it's a non-issue.

Re: Giving up on Julia

#159

Post by gh02t »

bmh100 wrote: post #41
vitaut wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the detailed response. I hope that my post wasn't too harsh, the intent was mostly to attract attention to the current issues not to undermine the great work that you and others have been doing. I'm glad that many of the issues that I mentioned are being addressed. Maybe I'll give Julia another go in some time =). The question of syntax is subjective of course. From the set {C-like, Python, MATLAB} I'd def…

One-based indexing is also used in Fortran, which seems to be used in a great deal of numerical computing even today. Additionally, BLAS/LAPACK is an important linear algebra library written in Fortan. I am somewhat confused by your discussion of startup times. Since Julia is a "programming language for technical computing", what scenario are you imagining where startup times would be a significant concern?

Fortran has the rather unusual feature that you can change the indexing to an arbitrary offset. You can declare arrays to be indexed from 0 if you want, but it defaults to 1 and almost nobody uses this feature for obvious reasons.

Re: Giving up on Julia

#160

Post by vitaut »

KenoFischer wrote: post #9

Happy to address these points: - Startup performance/memory usage Yes, we are definitely very acutely aware of these. Julia is not currently optimized for frequently run short scripts. That's the price on pays for having to bring up the entire runtime system (initializing the compiler, RNG, external libraries etc). The good news is that there will be a solution to this soon, which is to statically compile your julia…

Regarding the slowdown in development, perhaps it's a seasonal variation connected to GSoC. For example, notice a drop in postings since October in https://groups.google.com/forum/#!aboutgroup/julia-dev . This seems to be more or less consistent with the observation in http://www.davideaversa.it/2015/12/the-most-promising-langua..., but that's just a guess.
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