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Re:MLJ.jl: A Julia package for composable machine learning by Jouvence on Monday April 12, 2021 @04:33AM (#26777129)
I never called it a strength; I simply don't care how fast Python is because I don't need to. Reasoning about what is going on under the hood with Python is just easier than Julia - if it needs to be fast, it's a fast external library being used.

This is really a minor issue stemming from the relative maturity of the languages - if Julia becomes more established I would hope usage of external libraries which don't offer a performance advantage (ie everything besides C and Fortran) eventually gets replaced with native packages to preserve the sanity of the users.

Re:MLJ.jl: A Julia package for composable machine learning by adgjlsfhk1 on Monday April 12, 2021 @10:06AM (#26779596)
One problem relying on fast libraries causes is it makes doing compiler tricks like automatic differentiation (AD) basically impossible. Also, it restricts the types of APIs that make sense. A simple example of this is to compare Scikit learn to Julia. In Scikit learn, most clustering methods don't allow the user to specify a distance function because doing so would require running python inside a tight C loop, tanking performance. In MLJ, on the other hand, basically anything that requires a distance function will allow you to pass one in rather than assuming euclidean distance. This is possible, because a distance function written in Julia can still be fast, so it can be used without slowing down the whole program for people who only want euclidean distances.
Re:MLJ.jl: A Julia package for composable machine learning by DNF2 on Monday April 12, 2021 @05:34AM (#26777498)
So then that 'weakness' in python is not an issue to you personally, because you fluently drop down to a fast language anytime you need to, with no particular loss in productivity?

Keep in mind though, that this could be a hurdle to those who are less multilingual. So even though it's not a weakness to everyone, it is to many.