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Julia adoption keeps climbing

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Re: Julia adoption keeps climbing

#181

Post by dopu »

I'm a graduate student that's switched almost completely over to Julia. Prior to it I worked in both MATLAB (the IDE is so nice, and writing out matrix computations is just great) and Python (for ML). Julia is absolutely nicer to write in than either of the two. MATLAB is slow and at times feels less like a programming language and more like an incomplete and brittle interface with the JVM. Python is also slow, and it feels awkward to use given that it was not explicitly designed for scientific workflows. With Julia I get proper typing, incredible speed, easy parallelization, and a kick ass REPL.

The only thing I truly miss in using Julia is the plotting capacities of MATLAB. I haven't found an environment that can match it in terms of interactivity. Give me the ability to (easily) save interactive figures for later use and Julia would be perfect.

Re: Julia adoption keeps climbing

#182

Post by enriquto »

Jugurtha wrote: post #176
enriquto wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> being stored as a normal julia file. Oh, man, this is indeed a major feature. My main point of friction with jupyter notebooks is the stupid json ipynb format. Why can't it be just a regular language file with comments?

> My main point of friction with jupyter notebooks is the stupid json ipynb format. Why can't it be just a regular language file with comments? Have you ever used Jupyter notebooks? They contain code, rendered Markdown, images, plots, video players, widgets, etc. How do you see a "regular language file with comments" supporting this, instead of the "stupid ipynb format"? You can use plain text files with Jupyter, too…

> They contain code, rendered Markdown, images, plots, video players, widgets, etc.

The code could be verbatim python code (or whatever language the notebook uses), and the rest could be embedded inside comments. I don't see any problem with that (besides the very concept of "rendered Markdown" being totally out of order). The fact that they are saving it as json by default seems more to be laziness by the developers than a well thought-out solution, that could be just a straightforward serializer.

Re: Julia adoption keeps climbing

#183

Post by StefanKarpinski »

ku-man wrote: post #102
veddox wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not meant for web, it's meant for scientific computing. And it has already left a mark on that field.

Then Julia should stop describing itself as a general-purpose programming language.

Julia absolutely is a general purpose language and has been from the beginning. However, there are plenty of languages that are fine for building websites, whereas there are no other languages with the combination of speed and usability that Julia offers in technical computing. It's a lovely language for doing all kinds of work and I personally mostly use it for non-technical computing these days — specifically to implement package management client/server infrastructure, which is mostly web + file system wrangling.

Re: Julia adoption keeps climbing

#184

Post by enriquto »

goerz wrote: post #120
enriquto wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> being stored as a normal julia file. Oh, man, this is indeed a major feature. My main point of friction with jupyter notebooks is the stupid json ipynb format. Why can't it be just a regular language file with comments?

Sounds like you want jupytext

Yes. What I really want is that ipynb disappears everywhere forever to be replaced by jupytext or a variant of it.

Re: Julia adoption keeps climbing

#185

Post by StefanKarpinski »

dopu wrote: post #181

I'm a graduate student that's switched almost completely over to Julia. Prior to it I worked in both MATLAB (the IDE is so nice, and writing out matrix computations is just great) and Python (for ML). Julia is absolutely nicer to write in than either of the two. MATLAB is slow and at times feels less like a programming language and more like an incomplete and brittle interface with the JVM. Python is also slow, and i…

Out of curiosity, have you tried using Plots.jl from VS Code? If so, what's missing from that experience?

Re: Julia adoption keeps climbing

#186

Post by jakobnissen »

dan-robertson wrote: post #83
superbcarrot wrote: post #4

Julia is a nice language, it's just tough to compete with Python. - The beginner experience in Julia is still much worse than it is in Python. Stuff that should work intuitively sometimes doesn't, and when you get a cryptic error message, it's difficult to find relevant help online. And when you do find help, some of it is out of date because the language has changed over the past few years. - You can squeeze a lot o…

I found the beginner installation/package installation experience a million times better than python (except that it’s tricky to explain that you type ] to enter the package manager but you don’t see the ] that you typed)

You can "using PKG" and then type "pkg"add MyPackage""

Re: Julia adoption keeps climbing

#187

Post by superdimwit »

dopu wrote: post #181

I'm a graduate student that's switched almost completely over to Julia. Prior to it I worked in both MATLAB (the IDE is so nice, and writing out matrix computations is just great) and Python (for ML). Julia is absolutely nicer to write in than either of the two. MATLAB is slow and at times feels less like a programming language and more like an incomplete and brittle interface with the JVM. Python is also slow, and i…

I would recommend Plotly.js in VSCode for interactive plotting.

Re: Julia adoption keeps climbing

#188

Post by ChrisRackauckas »

StefanKarpinski wrote: post #144
tpoacher wrote: post #100

I don't want to disparage Julia, it's actually a very nice language, and I was very excited to learn it a couple of years ago. But, honestly, I think their adoption at this point is less "linux-like" driven and much more "apple-like". In that, the language is 'ok', but the company is going to INCREDIBLE lengths with respect to shrewd marketing and buzz-creation at this point. Which is admirable but also kinda worryin…

This "Julia marketing conspiracy theory" that many people on HN seem to believe is so bizarre. What big tech company do you think is behind this incredible, shrewd and presumably well-funded marketing campaign? Julia is the only new major programming language of the last decade that doesn't have a major tech giant backing it. Adoption and development are pretty much entirely grass roots. If you see a lot of enthusias…

Poor Go, Dart, Swift for Tensorflow. How is Google going to compete with Julia Computing in terms of marketing and advertising?

Re: Julia adoption keeps climbing

#189

Post by forgotpwd16 »

D13Fd wrote: post #63

It’s extremely silly, but I don’t really like the name Julia for a programming language. It’s just a bit uncomfortable to have a programming language with a particular, kind of formal-sounding human name like Julia (or like Michael, Lauren, or Jonathan). It just feels weird to me. I know a number of people (family, friends, colleagues) named Julia. I honestly think it could have an effect on adoption. People have to…

With colleagues I've discussed some thought to come from a person name where others thought to come from Julia sets (which in turn are named after the mathematician G. Julia).

Re: Julia adoption keeps climbing

#190

Post by pjmlp »

oblio wrote: post #172
pjmlp wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need to write C or C++ when using a SQL RDMS, likewise .NET and Java shops don't need to write Go when using Docker/Kubernetes.

True, but I'm not talking about simple users. I'm talking about companies extending Kubernetes or building adjacent software. Even if their service doesn't necessarily integrate with Kubernetes, there is frequently a temptation to "follow your heroes". Look at the whole Cloud Native Foundation thing, I think most of their projects are developed using Go. So if you're using that stack, it's easy to assume that all new…

Actually Rust in what concerns Microsoft.

https://deislabs.io/posts/still-rusting-one-year-later/

I should also note that after creating the initial support for Go on VSCode, they have given it away to Google to maintain it.

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