Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by ajdecon 5194 days ago
Edit: Title asks for downsides (but it seems like tue kind of title that might be changed)

Disclaimer: I really like Julia, and loving it for some numerical stuff right now. That said...

Potential downsides:

- Very new, standard libs are still in flux

- Matlab-like syntax, which I have mixed feelings on

- Clustered parallelism uses ssh for transport, which I find slow (vs MPI)

- 1-based array indices (for Matlab and Fortran familiarity)

2 comments

1 based array indices are indeed a very opinionated decision. But I must say it isn't a very difficult thing to switch one's mental models around. Its very easy to get used to.
Not to be pedantic, but Fortran 1-based array indices are from Fortran 66 and earlier. Fortran 77 and on include the ability to index from any arbitrary integer, including negative ones.

You can declare a 21 element array indexed from -10 like so:

real x(-10:10)

So hopefully anyone familiar with Fortran isn't hung up on 1-based indices.

> "N̶o̶t̶ to be pedantic, [...]"
Yep, can't edit it now though :(