Try Julia • Hacker News Board

Re: Try Julia

#31

Post by programminggeek » Sun, Jan 26, 2014, 9:50 PM UTC

Am I crazy for feeling like Julia is the new HN darling like clojure, go, ruby, lisp, and scala before it?

It seems like in the last week it just started popping up on HN every couple days.

Re: Try Julia

#32

Post by RivieraKid » Sun, Jan 26, 2014, 9:54 PM UTC

kartikkumar wrote: post #22

I've been struggling with building a C++ library for astrodynamics simulations (anything involving the motion of objects in space) within my research group for the last four year. The biggest problem is that for our applications, performance-wise a lot of high-level languages just don't cut it (particularly MATLAB, which is pushed down our throat from freshman year onwards). After some deliberation (and before Python…

I just use Sublime Text and often copy/paste or include("code.jl") to REPL. I use Eclipse for Java development, but I just don't see a lot of added value for a Julia IDE.

Re: Try Julia

#33

Post by pcmonk » Sun, Jan 26, 2014, 9:54 PM UTC

programminggeek wrote: post #31

Am I crazy for feeling like Julia is the new HN darling like clojure, go, ruby, lisp, and scala before it? It seems like in the last week it just started popping up on HN every couple days.

HN goes through phases, which I rather like. This way, we get semi-in-depth coverage of topics serially instead of always uniformly dividing our attention among all interesting projects at the same time.

Re: Try Julia

#34

Post by RivieraKid » Sun, Jan 26, 2014, 9:56 PM UTC

sdegutis wrote: post #10

Blahah wrote: post #8

It's really easy to try Julia by just downloading it: http://julialang.org/downloads/ . I'm becoming increasingly convinced that Julia is the future of technical computing. We've just started pulling together a BioJulia team - if anyone is interested drop an email (in profile).

Honestly I'm convinced it's a lot more generally applicable than scientific computing. Much of heavy lifting I had to do in C, I can now do in Julia with nearly the same speed and efficiency. Plus, for a lot of the problems I would have chosen Python, Ruby, or even Clojure for, I could really see myself using Julia now.

+1 Besides libs and ecosystem in general, I don't see any advantage Python / Ruby / Clojure have over Julia.

Re: Try Julia

#35

Post by Debilski » Sun, Jan 26, 2014, 10:01 PM UTC

rebo wrote: post #23

Is round(x) broken? Julia's standard library includes a host of mathematical functions, in addition to the standard operators. Complex numbers are also supported, using the built-in im unit: round(pi) lcm(54, 392, 232) # least common multiple sqrt(square(100)) e^(pi * im) log(e ^ 2) + log10(100) When you're ready, type "next" to continue julia> round(pi) no method round(MathConst{:π},)

round(x) only works for a few specialised types of x. help(round) tells you that it will return the same type then. Of course for a type of MathConst{:π}, that won’t work. For generic types, you need to at least specify the number of digits (round(pi, 3)). (See also: methods(round))

Re: Try Julia

#36

Post by sdegutis » Sun, Jan 26, 2014, 10:01 PM UTC

RivieraKid wrote: post #34

sdegutis wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly I'm convinced it's a lot more generally applicable than scientific computing. Much of heavy lifting I had to do in C, I can now do in Julia with nearly the same speed and efficiency. Plus, for a lot of the problems I would have chosen Python, Ruby, or even Clojure for, I could really see myself using Julia now.

+1 Besides libs and ecosystem in general, I don't see any advantage Python / Ruby / Clojure have over Julia.

And libs/tooling naturally come along with active use, which I think Julia is going to start seeing real soon. At least from me!

Re: Try Julia

#37

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Jan 26, 2014, 10:03 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: Try Julia

#38

Post by acangiano » Sun, Jan 26, 2014, 10:05 PM UTC

Fun with Julia:

    julia> 3 ** 60
    syntax: use ^ instead of **

    julia> 3 ^ 60
    -3535985420588157519

    julia> factorial(45)
    -8797348664486920192

    julia> factorial(75)
    0

    julia> 5 * 5555555555555555555
    -9115710369641325457

    julia> 5 * 55555555555555555555
    syntax: invalid numeric constant 55555555555555555555

This isn't C. The expectations have changed thanks to scripting languages. If I'm supposed to use this promising language to do calculations and manipulate data, I'd expect to be able to natively handle large numbers without overflowing.

Re: Try Julia

#39

Post by glomph » Sun, Jan 26, 2014, 10:12 PM UTC

Debilski wrote: post #35

rebo wrote: post #23

Is round(x) broken? Julia's standard library includes a host of mathematical functions, in addition to the standard operators. Complex numbers are also supported, using the built-in im unit: round(pi) lcm(54, 392, 232) # least common multiple sqrt(square(100)) e^(pi * im) log(e ^ 2) + log10(100) When you're ready, type "next" to continue julia> round(pi) no method round(MathConst{:π},)

round(x) only works for a few specialised types of x. help(round) tells you that it will return the same type then. Of course for a type of MathConst{:π}, that won’t work. For generic types, you need to at least specify the number of digits (round(pi, 3)). (See also: methods(round))

Weird that they have round(pi) as an example.

Re: Try Julia

#40

Post by ihnorton » Sun, Jan 26, 2014, 10:20 PM UTC

acangiano wrote: post #38

Fun with Julia: julia> 3 ** 60 syntax: use ^ instead of ** julia> 3 ^ 60 -3535985420588157519 julia> factorial(45) -8797348664486920192 julia> factorial(75) 0 julia> 5 * 5555555555555555555 -9115710369641325457 julia> 5 * 55555555555555555555 syntax: invalid numeric constant 55555555555555555555 This isn't C. The expectations have changed thanks to scripting languages. If I'm supposed to use this promising language t…

Julia supports arbitrary precision arithmetic just fine, but you need to explicitly use it. Overflow checks don't matter in Python or Ruby where everything is relatively slow.