Julia 0.6.0-rc1 new language features

Re:Julia 0.6.0-rc1 new language features by jfaucett on Tuesday May 09, 2017 @03:13PM (#14303003)

"Are you talking about breaking modules (like linalg) out of base or changing the semantics and mechanics of modules?"

Well, I'd be all for making Base as small as possible since I'm not big on monolithic standard libs and think everything possible should more or less be a package which you can include on a per project level.

As for the semantics and mechanics, I'd like to have the ability to have true public/private like rust or go, so that you can have a tightly defined public api and be sure your users only have access to that. Also I'd like to see the whole thing simplified it is way more complex than it needs to be. Just have import act like a function for example it could take a module, a keyword, and a vector like this:

    import MyModule, :all             # import all public defs 
    import MyModule, [a, b, K]        # use as MyModule.a, MyModule.b, MyModule.K
    import MyModule, :alias, [a,b,K]  # use as a, b, K

compare the above to https://docs.julialang.org/en/stable/manual/modules/ as far as I can tell the functionality is the same. Anyway those were some of the things that I didn't like about it and would have changed.

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Re:Julia 0.6.0-rc1 new language features by StefanKarpinski on Tuesday May 09, 2017 @09:52PM (#14305370)

Adding enforced access controls is certainly within the realm of possible future language enhancements, as is some tweaking of the module and import system (I'd like to collapse `import` into `using`, for example). But you seem to be doing a bit of a bait-and-switch in your comparison here: is Julia being compared with permissive, dynamic languages like Python and Ruby, or static languages with strict access controls like C++, Rust and Go? In terms of permissions and enforcement, Julia is quite similar to Python where access control is entirely by convention. In terms of binding resolution and modularity, it is quite similar to C++. People seem to be able to build large systems in both languages fairly effectively.

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Re:Julia 0.6.0-rc1 new language features by elcritch on Wednesday May 10, 2017 @02:13AM (#14306240)

Programming for scientific computing also tends to lead toward needing/wanting access to "internal" types a lot more. Personally, I find the restricted-only-by-convention approach of Julia modules (and Python/R) to be very handy.

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Re:Julia 0.6.0-rc1 new language features by jfaucett on Wednesday May 10, 2017 @08:32AM (#14307641)

"But you seem to be doing a bit of a bait-and-switch in your comparison here"

You're right I might be conflating the comparison but does it matter? JavaScript is a dynamic language which allows strict access controls (although its semi-hacky to do it).

Also, when is access control by convention a good idea? Sure you can live with it as Python and Ruby devs like myself do, but compared to languages which give you stricter controls like Erlang (which is also dynamic) its pretty obviously worse when it comes to building large software systems because it weakens the guarantees you can make about your libraries and the libraries you use to build those libraries.

"People seem to be able to build large systems in both languages fairly effectively."

People can and have built large systems in assembly. That doesn't mean assembly provides the optimal means for building composable software. Why settle for something thats mediocre when you're still unstable and change it for the better?

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Re:Julia 0.6.0-rc1 new language features by one-more-minute on Wednesday May 10, 2017 @10:07AM (#14308265)

Your argument is deeply confused. First Python is "much better than Julia for building modular applications", now it's flawed for the same reasons as Julia? Feature requests are fine but let's make them coherent please.

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