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by qsi 1829 days ago
I strongly agree with that, coming from Matlab to both Python and Julia. While I enjoy some of the similarities between Julia and Matlab, it does take some learning and effort to write proper code in another language. Array indexing with square brackets in Julia tripped me up initially for instance as Matlab uses parentheses, and it still take non-zero mental effort to adjust when writing Julia (despite having done C in a distant past...).

Writing proper and idiomatic code that gets the best out of each language takes even longer as it requires more knowledge and experience. Having spent the last ten years or so predominantly in Matlab, and the corporate environment moving increasingly to Python, and my own interest in Julia, I am getting a double dose of this.

Pragmatically I like Matlab best, in large part because I am so comfortable in my workflow and the large existing codebase, but also the IDE, debugger, etc. I most fascinated by Julia but find that exploiting its potential has its own learning curve, and wrangling with type stability has its own challenges. I am least enthused by Python, which I am learning mostly from necessity, but this may be colored by my extreme aversion to its use of indentation.

1 comments

I also started in Matlab + C, and didn't personally like Python very much, but wound up liking Julia after a bit of adjustment.

Still a work in progress, but I've written up a few of my lessons learned in the process [1] in case they're useful to anyone else. Properly figuring out type stability and dispatch-oriented programming took me way too long, but things started making a lot more sense after that.

I haven't used it a ton, but [2] also seems potentially useful for anyone else interested in making the same switch.

[1] https://github.com/brenhinkeller/JuliaAdviceForMatlabProgram...

[2] https://lakras.github.io/matlab-to-julia/