Julia adoption keeps climbing

Post by kescobo » Tue, Jan 19, 2021, 2:10 AM UTC

dm319 wrote: post #281

veddox wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I deeply loath R for its terrible type idiosyncracies, syntax, and slowness. However, even I must admit that it is incredibly good at what it was meant to do - analyse and display data. (And yes, the tidyverse is a huge improvement of the syntax, although it's telling that they basically reinvented the language to do so.) As an ecological modeller, I create my actual simulation models in Julia, because it is a much,…

I don't understand how people can loath R. If you take a functional approach, especially using pipes, dplyr and a split, apply, combine style, it is quite beautiful. Much nicer than trying to, say, divide a time period by an integer in Go.

Post by jakobnissen » Tue, Jan 19, 2021, 6:50 AM UTC

6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #234

jakobnissen wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Underrated comment. Yeah, if you want C-like performance, you have to do some low-level considerations, that is unavoidable at some point. So the "speed of C, convenience of Python" is misleading. However, for many, many small tasks, today's compilers are smart enough that you can express your idea in a high-level language and the generated code will be maximally efficient. The real killer feature of Julia is that, w…

That's still a massive selling point. In python, getting speed can be weird and counterintuitive. In C, a straightforward algorithm can be blazing fast. For example, finding the length of the longest word in a string, you can just iterate through the string keeping track of a few indices. In cases like that, where the obvious simple C function is incredibly faster than the same python, where does Julia fit in? Would…

    function longest_word(st::Union{String, SubString{String}})
        len = 0
        start = 1
        @inbounds for i in 1:ncodeunits(st)
            if codeunit(st, i) == UInt8(' ')
                len = max(len, i - start)
                start = i + 1
            end
        end
        max(len, ncodeunits(st) + 1 - start)
    end

    function longest_word(st::Union{String, SubString{String}})
        len = i = 0
        start = 1
        for char in st
            i += 1
            if isspace(char)
                len = max(len, i - start)
                start = i + 1
            end
        end
        max(len, i + 1 - start)
    end

Post by _v7gu » Tue, Jan 19, 2021, 7:33 AM UTC

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…

Post by mirekrusin » Tue, Jan 19, 2021, 7:45 AM UTC

i_am_proteus wrote: post #101

jpfr wrote: post #23

I teach a graduate course in optimization methods for machine learning and engineering [1,2]. Julia is just perfect for teaching numerical algorithms. First, it removes the typical numpy syntax boilerplate. Due to its conciseness, Julia has mostly replaced showing pseudo-code on my slides. It can be just as concise / readable; and on top the students immeditaly get the "real thing" they can plug into Jupyter notebook…

This. Julia's combination of human-readable pseudocode-like code and speed makes it perfect for these applications, and seems to be driving adoption.

Post by amkkma » Tue, Jan 19, 2021, 2:51 PM UTC

KenoFischer wrote: post #245

amkkma wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about traits or multiple inheritance?

That's more on the "nice to have" list (at least from my perspective - others may have different opinions).