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Computer scientist Viral Shah helped build Julia from Bengaluru, India

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Re: Computer scientist Viral Shah helped build Julia from Bengaluru, India

#31

Post by ViralBShah »

vostok wrote: post #19
ms013 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same reasons people migrated to Python in the late 90s from matlab, Fortran and C++: Python addressed pain points in those languages and ecosystems. Julia addresses deficiencies in Python the language. Unfortunately, it lacks the ecosystem: until it gets the rich library set that Python has, we're stuck with Python since ecosystem is arguably more important for practical traction than the base language.

I don't know how well it works, but Julia does let you use python libraries. @pyimport matplotlib.pyplot as plt x = linspace(0,2*pi,1000); y = sin(3*x + 4*cos(2*x)); plt.plot(x, y, color="red", linewidth=2.0, linestyle="--") plt.show() https://github.com/JuliaPy/PyCall.jl

Works really well and a lot of python scientific software is part of a typical julia install.

Re: Computer scientist Viral Shah helped build Julia from Bengaluru, India

#32

Post by mrkgnao »

yomritoyj wrote: post #17

As an Indian working in India, the 'in Bengaluru' part actually makes me a bit sad. While Shah may have physically been in India when he was working on Julia, the project might not have happened without his having gone to the US for graduate studies. I can't think of any comparable project started entirely by people working in India. The reason is not lack of ability: my guess is that at any time India's best institu…

Manish Goregaokar[0] is a well-known Rust developer, and afaik he studied at IIT Bombay before going on to Mozilla. (Apologies if this is incorrect.)

[0]: https://github.com/Manishearth

Re: Computer scientist Viral Shah helped build Julia from Bengaluru, India

#35

Post by happy-go-lucky »

ViralBShah wrote: post #25
yomritoyj wrote: post #17

As an Indian working in India, the 'in Bengaluru' part actually makes me a bit sad. While Shah may have physically been in India when he was working on Julia, the project might not have happened without his having gone to the US for graduate studies. I can't think of any comparable project started entirely by people working in India. The reason is not lack of ability: my guess is that at any time India's best institu…

While it is true that my PhD experience at UC Santa Barbara was crucial to my network of collaborators and work on Julia, there are several contributors to Julia from India who have not gone for graduate studies abroad. There are many contributions from undergraduates as well. I am just glad that Julia is a living breathing open source project with significant contributions and work from around the world, including I…

"While it is true that my PhD experience at UC Santa Barbara was crucial to my network of collaborators and work on Julia, there are several contributors to Julia from India who have not gone for graduate studies abroad. There are many contributions from undergraduates as well. I am just glad that Julia is a living breathing open source project with significant contributions and work from around the world, including India."

It reminds me of the collaboration between Hardy and Ramanujan. To me, the significant contributions from around the world, including India, represent Ramanujan working on his own in India while your PhD experience at UC Santa Barbara could be comparable to that of Ramanujan working in collaboration with Hardy at Cambridge. Hope that is not an overstatement. Your work should serve as an inspiration to many in India. Thank you for giving us a language to code in.

Re: Computer scientist Viral Shah helped build Julia from Bengaluru, India

#36

Post by Nano2rad »

yomritoyj wrote: post #17

As an Indian working in India, the 'in Bengaluru' part actually makes me a bit sad. While Shah may have physically been in India when he was working on Julia, the project might not have happened without his having gone to the US for graduate studies. I can't think of any comparable project started entirely by people working in India. The reason is not lack of ability: my guess is that at any time India's best institu…

If it is poverty, they could start such projects after 2 years in industry, after they become somewhat comfortable. It is somthing else.

Re: Computer scientist Viral Shah helped build Julia from Bengaluru, India

#37

Post by oblio »

Nano2rad wrote: post #36
yomritoyj wrote: post #17

As an Indian working in India, the 'in Bengaluru' part actually makes me a bit sad. While Shah may have physically been in India when he was working on Julia, the project might not have happened without his having gone to the US for graduate studies. I can't think of any comparable project started entirely by people working in India. The reason is not lack of ability: my guess is that at any time India's best institu…

If it is poverty, they could start such projects after 2 years in industry, after they become somewhat comfortable. It is somthing else.

That's not how poverty works. Poor people don't suddenly change their mindset once they become rich. Some never change it.

Poor people are usually still afraid of falling back into poverty plus they still have poor friends or relatives who might rely on them.

Re: Computer scientist Viral Shah helped build Julia from Bengaluru, India

#38

Post by wohlergehen »

Lxr wrote: post #14
kwk236 wrote: post #4

Why can't people just settle on Python? Julia is going to die anyways in the near future.

Julia is better than Python for a lot of things - basically when you can't vectorise your algorithm and don't feel like writing C++.

Python has numba, which is equally backed by LLVM. What makes Julia interesting compared to Python IMO is its macro system much more than its performance benefits.

Re: Computer scientist Viral Shah helped build Julia from Bengaluru, India

#39

Post by iamed2 »

tigershark wrote: post #22
tigershark wrote: post #18

Reading this post it seems that Julia is the silver bullet for every programming problems (or at least the ones addressable in python). I guess it's not. It is just another (very useful, admittedly) tool for the job. I really can't stand when every new language or framework or technology or whatever tries to be THE silver bullet. How long it will be before we learn that such a thing doesn't exist and we are always go…

The downvote without any whatsoever explanation is just the confirmation that nowadays the different languages/technologies are picked up mainly because of fanboysm/cargo cult rather than because they are useful for a very specific problem. It's easier to pickup whatever other people are choosing for themselves in the same way as it's easier just to press the downvote button without any explanation. Honestly this soc…

I think the downvotes are probably because the article didn't actually talk about Julia that way. And Julia definitely expresses a target audience and target problem domain. As a member of the Julia community, I don't see people jumping on board because of "fanboyism". People come because they have a problem that Julia is suited to solve and they have been disappointed with the alternatives.

Re: Computer scientist Viral Shah helped build Julia from Bengaluru, India

#40

Post by joe5644774 »

joericky233223 wrote: post #28
joericky233223 wrote: post #23

It's a comparison between apples and oranges. If he is creating a language he is at least 10x guy and they are in high demand and don't have to bother about the things 1x devs have to worry about like... getting a job or getting financial stability. The problem is always with 1x guys taking jobs of another 1x guys from another nation.

Simple economics when supply is in shortage demand increases. The shortage for 10x devs are so much that the worst a 10x guy from another country can do is reduce the salary of another 10x guy. But with the 1x guy it's a live or die situation, their job is in danger because 1x guys are too much in supply.

That's sad
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