Why I'm Betting On Julia • Hacker News Board

Re: Why I'm Betting On Julia

#171

Post by pjmlp » Thu, Jan 23, 2014, 11:22 PM UTC

digikata wrote: post #95

jjoonathan wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tend to agree with you about tools. I have yet to meet a language feature that's more important than library availability, profiling, autocompletion, documentation, debugging, etc. Then again, I don't face the script/C/CUDA choice everyday (most of his detractors on this thread don't either, I'd be willing to bet) so his circumstances are probably different enough to justify a different priority list. His argument…

> I've never met a FFI I didn't come to loathe I've felt that pain. With so many new programming languages popping up, I've been wondering if the next killer programming improvement isn't strictly a programming language at all, but rather something that rethinks the linker, manages execution, and facilitates interfaces between larger blocks of code (maybe in multiple languages).

You mean like OS/400 TMI, .NET, JVM?

Re: Why I'm Betting On Julia

#172

Post by foundart » Thu, Jan 23, 2014, 11:27 PM UTC

astrieanna wrote: post #125

foundart wrote: post #82

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™

Multiple dispatch lets you make math operators work like they do in path. That means that you can use `+` the same way on ints, floats, matrices, and your own self-defined numeric type. If `x` is a variable of your new numeric type, OO languages make making `x + 5` work easy, but `5 + x` super hard. Multiple dispatch makes both cases (equally) easy. This was, as I understand it, the major reason that Julia uses multi…

Totally makes sense. Thanks for the info. Will also dig around in the code.

Re: Why I'm Betting On Julia

#173

Post by gfodor » Thu, Jan 23, 2014, 11:31 PM UTC

rodgerd wrote: post #43

gfodor wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also a lot of scientific computing things are very much it works or it doesn't, and once it does it is a reification of some fundamental mathematical algorithm: a black box that should never need to be opened again.

Which is terrible science. Job #1 of good science is reproducability. Crapping out black boxes and claiming "I've proven my theory" in a way no-one else can analyse or reproduce undermines the fundamentals of the scientific method.

i'm referring to cases where you are say, porting or adapting a well understood algorithm. once the algorithm is at parity in terms of inputs and outputs the implementation details are relatively irrelevant from that point forward.

Re: Why I'm Betting On Julia

#174

Post by blah32497 » Thu, Jan 23, 2014, 11:31 PM UTC

Pxtl wrote: post #50

kevinalexbrown wrote: post #48

When out with friends recently, one of them mentioned how awesome Julia is. I was surprised to hear someone talk about it, even from another person in science. She turned and gushed about how awesome it was, how supportive the community was, even though she was "not really someone who likes programming." And she liked it so much she was telling her friends about it at a bar! If you make a programming language that pe…

To be fair, there's also Python+NumPy and R in that space, not just Matlab. Besides the "tinker with LLVM" thing, what does Julia offer that Python (or Cython for speed)+NumPy does not?

I used R day to day, but it's NOT as easy as MATLAB. There just isn't the same level of documentation and clarity.

Re: Why I'm Betting On Julia

#175

Post by Malarkey73 » Thu, Jan 23, 2014, 11:33 PM UTC

This is odd as a much better post on Julia v R v MATLAB v Python etc has got little attention: http://slendermeans.org/language-wars.html

Re: Why I'm Betting On Julia

#176

Post by wirrbel » Thu, Jan 23, 2014, 11:35 PM UTC

xixi77 wrote: post #120

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…

His point is: while these things can be nice, no one cares about them other than language designer. They are only means to an end, which is user experience. Sure, some car buyers may know or care what alloy their cylinder block is made of, but a lot don't know, and don't care, how many cylinders there are. They only care (somewhat) about how it drives. And it is certainly possible to have a language with all the theo…

Hmm, this is an accurate description on how a lot of research work is run.But then there are the cases where that data analysis that was put together within a week is suddenly used by the whole research group, amended, extended and used with more and more data. Sometimes someone even sticks a GUI on top, plots and consecutive analysis steps are added, etc.

And this is when you really want to have a language that can be used to build up real abstraction.

Re: Why I'm Betting On Julia

#177

Post by wirrbel » Thu, Jan 23, 2014, 11:39 PM UTC

Beliavsky wrote: post #165

wirrbel wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You cannot overestimate enough how old folks growing up with Fortran just won't accept Array indizes starting at 0 instead of 1. Then because professors demand it, colleges buy Matlab campus licenses and "encourage" their staff/students to use it, incorporate in teaching and research. Sadly, when the student is not on campus anymore, he/she cannot reevaluate old date and in the new job they then demand a matlab licen…

Btw, Fortran arrays start at 1 by default, but the lower bound can be specified by the user, for example real :: x(-10:10) is a real vector of 21 elements from -10 to 10.

interesting. I have so far only read some fortran code, never really dived into it in more detail.

Re: Why I'm Betting On Julia

#178

Post by Sssnake » Thu, Jan 23, 2014, 11:42 PM UTC

gfodor wrote: post #90

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.

Because those things are actually hugely important, he spends the rest of the article showing how important they are. He is simply too ignorant to recognize his own ignorance, and revels in this fact. He starts out with "I dun need no fancy book learnin!" and you don't see how it is anti-intellectual?

Re: Why I'm Betting On Julia

#179

Post by Sssnake » Thu, Jan 23, 2014, 11:48 PM UTC

jamesjporter wrote: post #166

tesmar2 wrote: post #8

> but it's poised to do for technical computing what Node.js is doing for web development I stopped right there. Node.js has only a few great use cases where it shines and in the real world, the vast majority of shops have not switched to using it.

I think he might mean "shaking things up" (which Node certainly has done) rather than "taking over the world" (which, as you point out, it has not).

>I think he might mean "shaking things up" (which Node certainly has done)

How has it "shaken things up"? It is yet another irrelevant mess of crap a few dumb web monkeys use. There's one of those every other month.

Re: Why I'm Betting On Julia

#180

Post by xixi77 » Thu, Jan 23, 2014, 11:49 PM UTC

tieTYT wrote: post #80

untog wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like that's exactly what he doesn't care about. If you're prototyping or writing a lot of one off operations (for data analysis, maybe) then maintainability is less important.

IME, you only know that with hindsight. I have made one off programs I never needed to look at again. I've also made what I thought were one off programs that I needed to maintain for a while. Even in a prototype, you may need to rework a particular piece of code multiple times before it works correctly. Even with a prototype, you may need to use it as a reference for your official version. Even with a prototype, you…

Honestly, all these languages, even Matlab, are quite decent at maintainability at the scale they are typically used. Almost anything would be decent at that scale. And speed matters, but you can always rewrite particularly crucial piece in Fortran when you know it all works.