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

Why I'm Betting On Julia

evanmiller.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 258 posts

Re: Why I'm Betting On Julia

#81

Post by nbouscal »

candybar wrote: post #71

I really don't like the anti-intellectual tone of the beginning. "The problem with most programming languages is they're designed by language geeks, who tend to worry about things that I don't much care for. Safety, type systems, homoiconicity, and so forth." can be rewritten as: "The problem with most software is that they are designed by computer geeks, who tend to worry about things that I don't much care for. Inf…

I'm glad I'm not the only one. I couldn't make it past the first paragraph. He says he doesn't care for safety and type systems, and then says what he cares about is making it work and making it fast, both of which are significantly aided by safety and type systems.

Re: Why I'm Betting On Julia

#82

Post by foundart »

I see the Julia home page lists multiple dispatch as one of its benefits. Since my only real exposure to multiple dispatch was when I inherited some CLOS code where it was used to create a nightmare of spaghetti, I'm wondering if any Julia fans here would care to elaborate on how they've used multiple dispatch for Good™ instead of Evil™

Re: Why I'm Betting On Julia

#83

Post by _random_ »

candybar wrote: post #71

I really don't like the anti-intellectual tone of the beginning. "The problem with most programming languages is they're designed by language geeks, who tend to worry about things that I don't much care for. Safety, type systems, homoiconicity, and so forth." can be rewritten as: "The problem with most software is that they are designed by computer geeks, who tend to worry about things that I don't much care for. Inf…

The problem with most cars is they're designed by professionals, who tend to worry about things some people don't much care for. Safety, security, reliability, and so forth.

Re: Why I'm Betting On Julia

#84

Post by weichi »

astrieanna wrote: post #57
weichi wrote: post #46

How good is the interactive plotting experience?

I haven't had the smoothest experiences getting plotting in general to work (it's getting progressively better). The plotting in IJulia using PyPlot (matplotlib wrapper) has been good for me. The Julia plotting packages are Winston, Gadfly, and Gaston. You can find detailed discussions of which one to use on the julia-users mailing list.

Thank you. I can appreciate that it's difficult to implement good interactive plotting, especially across platforms. It's also very very important!

Re: Why I'm Betting On Julia

#85

Post by exDM69 »

rodgerd wrote: post #40
vanderZwan wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's arguable - I hear more people talking about how types reduce bugs in code than how it improves performance. Besides, that's one of the three examples he mentioned, and the the other two are not features involved with said optimisation.

Well, it certainly optimises my ability to get shit done if I don't waste it on subtle type-conversion debugging.

I don't know if this an argument for or against static typing and type safety but there are two sides to this coin.

In dynamic programming languages it is definitely easy to get shit done, at least initially.

However as a project progresses to the point where a lot of refactoring takes place and there's more than a handful of people working on it, a good static typing language will make sure that shit keeps on getting done and things won't break due to a subtle typing error. Things will be caught by the compiler even before you get running the test suite.

Re: Why I'm Betting On Julia

#86

Post by rrggrr »

I'm betting on Scratch.

The benefits of automation are mostly denied to me because I haven't the time to learn Julia or properly use the Python skills I already possess. I do however have the time to link and configure objects ala Scratch and Apple's Automator, or the first generation of what was once Allaire's Cold Fusion. Its not just me, either. The demand for automation tools is pervasive in business and education, but the time and innate skills needed to program effectively belong to a subset of the needy. Bring me a language that is truly a means to an end and take my money.

Re: Why I'm Betting On Julia

#88

Post by steveklabnik »

rodgerd wrote: post #40
vanderZwan wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's arguable - I hear more people talking about how types reduce bugs in code than how it improves performance. Besides, that's one of the three examples he mentioned, and the the other two are not features involved with said optimisation.

Well, it certainly optimises my ability to get shit done if I don't waste it on subtle type-conversion debugging.

That's a strong vs. weak issue, not a static vs dynamic issue.

  irb(main):001:0> 1 + "hello"
  TypeError: String can't be coerced into Fixnum
          from (irb):1:in `+'
          from (irb):1
          from /usr/bin/irb:12:in `'

Re: Why I'm Betting On Julia

#89

Post by rubyn00bie »

Not to be a an asshole, something I have to preface a lot on here... but, uhh,

"Safety, type systems, homoiconicity, and so forth. I'm sure these things are great, but when I'm messing around with a new project for fun, my two concerns are 1) making it work and 2) making it fast."

Uhhh... Call me crazy, but wouldn't the "so forth" be what you care about if #2 is that important to you?

Re: Why I'm Betting On Julia

#90

Post by gfodor »

candybar wrote: post #71

I really don't like the anti-intellectual tone of the beginning. "The problem with most programming languages is they're designed by language geeks, who tend to worry about things that I don't much care for. Safety, type systems, homoiconicity, and so forth." can be rewritten as: "The problem with most software is that they are designed by computer geeks, who tend to worry about things that I don't much care for. Inf…

How is this anti-intellectual? Most languages are designed by language geeks by definition. And language geeks tend to worry about the things mentioned. And he doesn't care about these things because they've been largely irrelevant for the work he's had to do.
Post reply on HN