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

Julia 1.6: what has changed since Julia 1.0?

oxinabox.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 212 posts

Re: Julia 1.6: what has changed since Julia 1.0?

#21

Post by Sukera »

saiojd wrote: post #16

I've tried Julia and really liked it, but the user experience was pretty bad. The language really needs faster interactivity or a strong type checker. I found myself waiting after than compiler a lot more than in some AOT compiled language like Rust... I fear the language suffers from being overused by people who are familiar with Matlab and Python and draws too much inspiration from them, much like how Rust draws to…

The most important part about the releases since 1.0 is that compile time has been significantly reduced, the article touches on basically all ways how this has been done - may I ask when you've last tried it?

Re: Julia 1.6: what has changed since Julia 1.0?

#23

Post by oxinabox »

the__alchemist wrote: post #20

> Plotting, it turns out, is basically a really hard thing for a compiler. It is many, many, small methods, most of which are only called once. And unlike most Julia code, it doesn’t actually benefit all that much from Julia’s JIT. Julia’s JIT is normally specializing code, and running a ton of optimizations. But plotting itself isn’t in the hot-loop – optimizing the code takes longer than running it the few dozen ti…

> You don't need to compile the plotting library every time.

You don't need to but Julia does. Its definately a issue, and I know it is being worked on.

Julia doesn't store compiled binary code between sessions. Unless you compile it into a sysimage.

There are apparently reasons why caching compiled binary like this is complicated in Julia. But once that is solved, wow things are going to be nice.

Re: Julia 1.6: what has changed since Julia 1.0?

#25

Post by oscardssmith »

cambalache wrote: post #19
saiojd wrote: post #16

I've tried Julia and really liked it, but the user experience was pretty bad. The language really needs faster interactivity or a strong type checker. I found myself waiting after than compiler a lot more than in some AOT compiled language like Rust... I fear the language suffers from being overused by people who are familiar with Matlab and Python and draws too much inspiration from them, much like how Rust draws to…

What boggles my mind is that a language oriented to scientific programming has such a lousy time to first plot. I know it has been improving, it is still not acceptable. Not for me as a user, not acceptable for a language who wants to become mainstream.

It's a better time to first plot than matlab, which is one of the other major contenders. On my computer it is about 3 seconds, which is noticable, but far from disqualifing.

Re: Julia 1.6: what has changed since Julia 1.0?

#26

Post by saiojd »

Sukera wrote: post #21
saiojd wrote: post #16

I've tried Julia and really liked it, but the user experience was pretty bad. The language really needs faster interactivity or a strong type checker. I found myself waiting after than compiler a lot more than in some AOT compiled language like Rust... I fear the language suffers from being overused by people who are familiar with Matlab and Python and draws too much inspiration from them, much like how Rust draws to…

The most important part about the releases since 1.0 is that compile time has been significantly reduced, the article touches on basically all ways how this has been done - may I ask when you've last tried it?

A few months ago. First time to plot is noticeably better than it was a few versions ago, but still extremely slow compared to Python. The article gives a benchmark of 9 seconds. I mean, come on.

The main problem I had was simply that what any time I needed to modify a struct field, or anytime my program crashed, or any time the buggy IDE extension crashed, I needed to recompile everything. I also haven't found anyone particularly interested in basic things like interfaces, despite the language supporting type hierarchies (why can't we enforce contracts for types? The whole language is built around overloading...)

Overall this is very frustrating as the language is excellent is many regards, in particular multiple dispatch and the compilation model are just great. The "just ahed of time" compilation is one of those obvious-in-hindsight ideas IMO, better than full interpretation or full compilation for nearly all use cases, if only it could be cached between interpreter sessions or if you didn't need to restart all the time...

Re: Julia 1.6: what has changed since Julia 1.0?

#27

Post by rightbyte »

cambalache wrote: post #19
saiojd wrote: post #16

I've tried Julia and really liked it, but the user experience was pretty bad. The language really needs faster interactivity or a strong type checker. I found myself waiting after than compiler a lot more than in some AOT compiled language like Rust... I fear the language suffers from being overused by people who are familiar with Matlab and Python and draws too much inspiration from them, much like how Rust draws to…

What boggles my mind is that a language oriented to scientific programming has such a lousy time to first plot. I know it has been improving, it is still not acceptable. Not for me as a user, not acceptable for a language who wants to become mainstream.

The plot is also very simple. No zoom, brush, save to file, label, title, regression etc that you need to process it in a GUI and save for a report.

I would really like to use Julia as a "Matlab or Octave but with nice string concatenation" but the UI is just lacking for one off calculations and data processing.

Re: Julia 1.6: what has changed since Julia 1.0?

#29

Post by baldfat »

phillc73 wrote: post #24
baldfat wrote: post #22

I loved the idea of Julia but R and specifically the tiddyverse https://www.tidyverse.org/ Just makes everything else seem not as elegant to my humble eyes.

Have you tried Query.jl or DataFramesMeta.jl?

I don't like working with DATA TABLES UNLESS it is a HUGE data frames. Then if it is huge I'll go towards sparks. I normally am working with under a million objects which with today's computers is not that big.

Edit I meant to say that DATA TABLES library in R reminds me more of Query.jl then tiddyverse

Re: Julia 1.6: what has changed since Julia 1.0?

#30

Post by thetwentyone »

swagonomixxx wrote: post #11

As someone who knows very little but wants to learn: what's the best way to get up and running with Julia? On the website, they link a lot of videos, but I prefer textual formats. Is there something like the Rust Book for Julia?

- [JuliaLang.org](https://julialang.org/), the home site with the downloads to get started, and links to learning resources.

- [JuliaHub](https://juliahub.com/ui/Home) indexes open-source Julia packages and makes the entire ecosystem and documentation searchable from one place.

- [JuliaAcademy](https://juliaacademy.com/courses), which has free short courses in Data Science, Introduction to Julia, DataFrames.jl, Machine Learning, and more.

- [Data Science Tutorials](https://alan-turing-institute.github.io/DataScienceTutorials...) from the Alan Turing Institute.

- [Learn Julia in Y minutes](https://learnxinyminutes.com/docs/julia/), a great quick-start if you are already comfortable with coding.

- [Think Julia](https://benlauwens.github.io/ThinkJulia.jl/latest/book.html), a free e-book (or paid print edition) book which introduces programming from the start and teaches you valuable ways of thinking.

- [Design Patterns and Best Practices](https://www.packtpub.com/application-development/hands-desig...), a book that will help you as you transition from smaller, one-off scripts to designing larger packages and projects.

- Lots more topical books (Statistics, Optimization, etc) if looking for a Julia-oriented subject matter

Post reply on HN