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Why I'm Betting On Julia

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Re: Why I'm Betting On Julia

#221

Post by shele »

lloda wrote: post #214
StefanKarpinski wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That the multiplication operation is overloaded in the Mathematical World with the same symbol as the "normal" multiplication is unfortunate, numpy's solution is as good as introducing two different operators The thing is that the multiplication operation for matrices is matrix multiplication, not elementwise multiplication. When you apply a polynomial like x^2 + y to matrices, you do not want to apply the polynomi…

Sometimes an array of numbers is just an array of numbers. The language shouldn't presume too much about what you mean to do with them. The moment you need an extra dimension (or anything other than 2 really) Matlab's ‘everything is a matrix’ approach falls apart. Matlab is a toy language in so many ways and this is just another one. It's a pity that Julia adopted Matlab's pop matrix semantics instead of some solid a…

Yes, adverbs, ranked matrix operator and some other parts of the APL/J approach I miss a bit and find them tedious to emulate/avoid.

Re: Why I'm Betting On Julia

#223

Post by pjmlp »

jjoonathan wrote: post #107
digikata wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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).

I've heard many very smart people (professors, leaders of large HPC efforts, "language geeks") express the same sentiment over the years. Unfortunately, it's a btch of a problem, as attested to by the veritable graveyard of half-baked solutions out there. Apple's "Bridge Support" is the closest thing I've seen to success (haven't worked with MS's CIL) and it leaves much to be desired. I'm not sure there is any way ar…

> I'm not sure there is any way around the impedance mismatches between languages.

CLR has an approach for that by defining what is known as CLS, Common Language Subsystem.

Likewise they have a similar approach on WinRT, known as Type Providers.

However they also have their impedance mismatches, as you are only allowed to use types that are usable by all languages that target such runtimes.

The benefit is that they still allow for an higher level of code abstractions than pure C functions.

Re: Why I'm Betting On Julia

#224

Post by rhizome31 »

volaski wrote: post #61
Mikeb85 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Of course not. 'Switching' is usually more pain than it's worth, especially if your previous solution works. New start-ups are likely the ones who will be using it, just as Rails took off in the start-up world. Likewise, R and Python are going to continue to be in use in existing p…

Rails took off among startups because it made it so much more efficient to iterate on design, but node.js is nothing like that. I actually tried node.js for a while and came back to rails because it's simply not convenient enough. Like the guy below said, it's great for certain use cases but overall it doesn't bring much else to the table.

I'm not a Node.js guy, but aren't you comparing two things that aren't comparable ? Would it be more fair to compare say Express and Rails ?

Re: Why I'm Betting On Julia

#225

Post by ihnorton »

DonGateley wrote: post #210

Is there a Julia forum anywhere. Like with a hierarchy of topics and subtopics and with hierarchical threads at the bottom level like HN? Optimally something that remembers what you've read.

Not a forum exactly, but julia-users and julia-dev are hosted on Google Groups which does threading and remembers what you've read. See the homepage for signup (julialang.org)

Re: Why I'm Betting On Julia

#226

Post by MrMan »

smortaz wrote: post #96

mini ASK HN: would there be any interest in supporting Julia in Visual Studio? (as a free/oss plugin). i lead the Python Tools for Visual Studio project at msft and would be curious if there is interest. as a side note, if you do you use Python & require Python/C++ debugging, PTVS now supports it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvJaKQ94lBY#t=10

That would be amazing!

Re: Why I'm Betting On Julia

#227

Post by volaski »

rhizome31 wrote: post #224
volaski wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rails took off among startups because it made it so much more efficient to iterate on design, but node.js is nothing like that. I actually tried node.js for a while and came back to rails because it's simply not convenient enough. Like the guy below said, it's great for certain use cases but overall it doesn't bring much else to the table.

I'm not a Node.js guy, but aren't you comparing two things that aren't comparable ? Would it be more fair to compare say Express and Rails ?

There's all these other "frameworks" on top of node you can use to emulate rails, of which Express is the most popular. But I am talking in terms of tools to use when I'm building a database backed REST app. Node.js was hot so I took some time building apps entirely using node--some with express, some with other "more advanced mvc" frameworks--but they're all mediocre at best compared to Rails. I am not comparing node with rails. I'm saying node is not good for building web apps because all you have is all these inferior web development frameworks. Either you need to write too much boilerplate code, or learn to use half baked frameworks that will get nowhere as much traction as rails

Re: Why I'm Betting On Julia

#228

Post by sampo »

haberman wrote: post #117

Can Julia be a competitor to R? I love R in concept (interactive environment for statistical analysis) but the language just drives me crazy in its multitude of types and the loosey-goosey ways it converts between them. A friend of mine is really proficient with R; when I walked him through some of the R patterns that are very confusing/irregular to me, he sort of laughed: he could see what I was saying but he said "…

Already in 2008 one of the R creators, Ross Ikaha, talked about how R is fundamentally slow and has inefficient memory use. And that a "next gen R" would be needed, and he was considering Common Lisp for the underlying language on compiler. See the "Back to the Future: Lisp as a Base for a Statistical Computing System".

https://www.stat.auckland.ac.nz/~ihaka/?Papers_and_Talks

But now apparently Julia also fulfills Ihaka's requirements for the basis on the "new R" system, so I wonder is the need-for-speed part of the R community is considering a switch to Julia, instead of building a "new R" from scratch?

Re: Why I'm Betting On Julia

#229

Post by tenfingers »

There's a lot to love in Julia, but my biggest nitpick is the 1-based array index. I can see where it comes from, but it's not something I can praise. I use R on a daily basis, where the aim is mostly interactive analysis, and still I cannot see any reason to use 1-based indexes. For a language that is instead mostly oriented to programming, I would have not went for the "familiarity" argument.

Re: Why I'm Betting On Julia

#230

Post by xerophtye »

lloda wrote: post #214
StefanKarpinski wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That the multiplication operation is overloaded in the Mathematical World with the same symbol as the "normal" multiplication is unfortunate, numpy's solution is as good as introducing two different operators The thing is that the multiplication operation for matrices is matrix multiplication, not elementwise multiplication. When you apply a polynomial like x^2 + y to matrices, you do not want to apply the polynomi…

Sometimes an array of numbers is just an array of numbers. The language shouldn't presume too much about what you mean to do with them. The moment you need an extra dimension (or anything other than 2 really) Matlab's ‘everything is a matrix’ approach falls apart. Matlab is a toy language in so many ways and this is just another one. It's a pity that Julia adopted Matlab's pop matrix semantics instead of some solid a…

how exactly does matlab's approach fai? I haven't had that much experience with it, but i do vaguely remember that it supports n-dimensions
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