Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Computer scientist Viral Shah helped build Julia from Bengaluru, India

qz.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 51 posts

Re: Computer scientist Viral Shah helped build Julia from Bengaluru, India

#21

Post by goombastic »

yomritoyj wrote: post #17

As an Indian working in India, the 'in Bengaluru' part actually makes me a bit sad. While Shah may have physically been in India when he was working on Julia, the project might not have happened without his having gone to the US for graduate studies. I can't think of any comparable project started entirely by people working in India. The reason is not lack of ability: my guess is that at any time India's best institu…

Given a choice between surviving and building something new, anyone would choose surviving. The red tape in India even now is atrocious. Recent raids on sales tax enforcers turned up corruption money in truckloads.

Re: Computer scientist Viral Shah helped build Julia from Bengaluru, India

#22

Post by tigershark »

tigershark wrote: post #18

Reading this post it seems that Julia is the silver bullet for every programming problems (or at least the ones addressable in python). I guess it's not. It is just another (very useful, admittedly) tool for the job. I really can't stand when every new language or framework or technology or whatever tries to be THE silver bullet. How long it will be before we learn that such a thing doesn't exist and we are always go…

The downvote without any whatsoever explanation is just the confirmation that nowadays the different languages/technologies are picked up mainly because of fanboysm/cargo cult rather than because they are useful for a very specific problem. It's easier to pickup whatever other people are choosing for themselves in the same way as it's easier just to press the downvote button without any explanation. Honestly this social side (upvote/downvote) leaves me quite sad thinking about the endless discussion that were triggered once upon a time and that nowadays are just becoming a war of upvotes/downvotes.

Re: Computer scientist Viral Shah helped build Julia from Bengaluru, India

#23

Post by joericky233223 »

It's a comparison between apples and oranges. If he is creating a language he is at least 10x guy and they are in high demand and don't have to bother about the things 1x devs have to worry about like... getting a job or getting financial stability. The problem is always with 1x guys taking jobs of another 1x guys from another nation.

Re: Computer scientist Viral Shah helped build Julia from Bengaluru, India

#24

Post by codepie »

yomritoyj wrote: post #17

As an Indian working in India, the 'in Bengaluru' part actually makes me a bit sad. While Shah may have physically been in India when he was working on Julia, the project might not have happened without his having gone to the US for graduate studies. I can't think of any comparable project started entirely by people working in India. The reason is not lack of ability: my guess is that at any time India's best institu…

It's true that these institutes haven't started something revolutionary, but there has been considerable amount of work in the right direction. I think there are multiple possible reasons behind it: 1) Most of the undergraduate students from these institutes either go study abroad or take up a job; which leaves only a fraction of the top students in these institutes. 2) Students who come for MS in these institutes have to clear GATE exam and most of them, according to what I have seen, join these institutes just for getting a good job and not for serious research.

Disclaimer: I work at one of the top institutes you mentioned.

Re: Computer scientist Viral Shah helped build Julia from Bengaluru, India

#25

Post by ViralBShah »

yomritoyj wrote: post #17

As an Indian working in India, the 'in Bengaluru' part actually makes me a bit sad. While Shah may have physically been in India when he was working on Julia, the project might not have happened without his having gone to the US for graduate studies. I can't think of any comparable project started entirely by people working in India. The reason is not lack of ability: my guess is that at any time India's best institu…

While it is true that my PhD experience at UC Santa Barbara was crucial to my network of collaborators and work on Julia, there are several contributors to Julia from India who have not gone for graduate studies abroad. There are many contributions from undergraduates as well. I am just glad that Julia is a living breathing open source project with significant contributions and work from around the world, including India.

I don't think that IITs or IISc or institutions are deciding factors. I feel that people who do interesting stuff (not just in software, but in all aspects of life) do it despite their backgrounds, conditions, and other labels. Of course there is poverty, and lack of basic education for millions of people, but there are also millions of people in India, and the rest of the world, who have the skill to do very interesting things.

Re: Computer scientist Viral Shah helped build Julia from Bengaluru, India

#26

Post by ViralBShah »

plinkplonk wrote: post #2

I don't have an opinion on the 'built in Bangalore' part, but I know Viral (live in the same apartment block and run across him occasionally and talk tech) and can confirm he is quite the agent of change. In addition to being immensely talented of course. In a world of people trying to puff themselves up, Viral Shah is very understated and humble and flies somewhat under the radar. Good to see his contributions are g…

Ravi, you are very kind as always!

Re: Computer scientist Viral Shah helped build Julia from Bengaluru, India

#27

Post by [deleted] »

joericky233223 wrote: post #23

It's a comparison between apples and oranges. If he is creating a language he is at least 10x guy and they are in high demand and don't have to bother about the things 1x devs have to worry about like... getting a job or getting financial stability. The problem is always with 1x guys taking jobs of another 1x guys from another nation.

[deleted]

Re: Computer scientist Viral Shah helped build Julia from Bengaluru, India

#28

Post by joericky233223 »

joericky233223 wrote: post #23

It's a comparison between apples and oranges. If he is creating a language he is at least 10x guy and they are in high demand and don't have to bother about the things 1x devs have to worry about like... getting a job or getting financial stability. The problem is always with 1x guys taking jobs of another 1x guys from another nation.

Simple economics when supply is in shortage demand increases. The shortage for 10x devs are so much that the worst a 10x guy from another country can do is reduce the salary of another 10x guy. But with the 1x guy it's a live or die situation, their job is in danger because 1x guys are too much in supply.

Re: Computer scientist Viral Shah helped build Julia from Bengaluru, India

#29

Post by ViralBShah »

codepie wrote: post #24
yomritoyj wrote: post #17

As an Indian working in India, the 'in Bengaluru' part actually makes me a bit sad. While Shah may have physically been in India when he was working on Julia, the project might not have happened without his having gone to the US for graduate studies. I can't think of any comparable project started entirely by people working in India. The reason is not lack of ability: my guess is that at any time India's best institu…

It's true that these institutes haven't started something revolutionary, but there has been considerable amount of work in the right direction. I think there are multiple possible reasons behind it: 1) Most of the undergraduate students from these institutes either go study abroad or take up a job; which leaves only a fraction of the top students in these institutes. 2) Students who come for MS in these institutes ha…

Institutions are ultimately people and incentives. I have met with a number of researchers in these institutions where people are doing amazing research and I wish that they were able to contribute those advancements in the form of code in Julia.

Even as we worked on Julia, we have been snubbed by some who think Julia is not real research, and had a hard time getting papers published. There is a larger issue of how open source foundational software gets developed and incentives for people who do that. Universities incentivize writing papers, not software, unfortunately.

Eventually, it did work out and SIAM Review published our Julia paper.

https://julialang.org/publications/julia-fresh-approach-BEKS...

Re: Computer scientist Viral Shah helped build Julia from Bengaluru, India

#30

Post by ViralBShah »

Derbasti wrote: post #20
kwk236 wrote: post #4

Why can't people just settle on Python? Julia is going to die anyways in the near future.

On an infinite time scale, you are certainly right. We're all going to die pretty soon, and so will our programming languages. In the meantime, though, Julia seems rather healthy, and this particular Python fanboy is nevertheless interested where Julia will take us! Julia is not an aggressor. It's not even a competitor. Rather, it is another stab at improving scientific computation. Let's focus on trying to learn fro…

I fully agree with this statement. We hope to move forward and help create new things rather than replace something today. And of course, Julia is not the last word on this innovation either!
Post reply on HN