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by ziotom78 1799 days ago
I am using Julia extensively since 2013, and I can say that it's awesome! But don't try to use it if you're looking for a general-purpose scripting language: Python is far better suited for this. Similarly, if you want to produce standalone executables, C++, Rust, Go or Nim are better.

However, Julia is perfect if you write mathematical/physical/engineering simulations and data analysis codes, which is my typical use case. Its support for multiple dispatch and custom operators lets you to write very efficient code without sacrificing readability, which is a big plus. Support for HPC computing is very good too.
1 comments
amkkma 1799 days ago
>Python is far better suited for this. Similarly, if you want to produce standalone executables, C++, Rust, Go or Nim are better.

That's the case now, because Julia made a design decision to focus on extreme composability, dynamism, generic codegen etc which involved compiler tradeoffs...but it's not inherent to the langauge.

For scripting, interpreted Julia is coming. For executables, small binary compilation is as well...particularly bullish on this given the new funding

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oxinabox 1799 days ago
> For scripting, interpreted Julia is coming.

Citation for this? Julia has had a built-in interpretted since 1.0, in 2017 use `--compile=min`, or `--compile=none` to make use of it. And JuliaInterpretter.jl has been working since 2018. Both are very slow -- slower than adding in the compile time for most applications. As I understand it, this is because a number of things in how the language works are predicated on having a optimizing JIT compiler. As is how the standard library and basically all packages are written.

Julia is going to over time become nicer for scripting, just because of various improvements. In particular, I put more hope on caching native code than on any new interpreter.

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ziotom78 1799 days ago
Yeah, you are right, these limitations are not much of a matter of the language itself.
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