IMO, if Julia lacks the necessary tooling, don't over-advertise it. When I say the lack of static compilation is a design problem, I mean such a critical feature should be in v1.0. Without it, many common tasks in other languages become difficult in Julia. For language adoption, you often only have one chance. If you push someone away, it is much harder to win them back.
Re:Julia 1.6 addresses latency issues
by eigenspace on Friday May 28, 2021 @03:39PM
(#27319617)
IMO, you are overestimating how big a deal static compilation is. Yes, there are usecases where it's important, but acting like a language shouldn't tag version 1.0 without static compilation just sounds ignorant and self centred.
The world is bigger than you.
This kind of comment just enforces the defensive perception towards the community. He clearly stated that it was just his opinion. Why not just point out that "common tasks" always refers to each own's bubble?
There is no need to insult people around.
Re:Julia 1.6 addresses latency issues
by eigenspace on Friday May 28, 2021 @06:19PM
(#27321192)
He says it's his opinion, but then states that the language shouldn't have tagged version 1.0 without it, and that people should not advertise julia because it's such a important feature.
I totally get that there are workflows that Julia is inappropriate for, but when someone says that a tool shouldn't be released because it doesn't target their workflow, I really don't know what to call that other than blindingly self centred.
Re:Julia 1.6 addresses latency issues
by ChrisRackauckas on Friday May 28, 2021 @05:31PM
(#27320769)
Why is static compilation such a major feature for large-scale differential equation solving? That's what I advertise Julia as good for. Probabilistic programming as well. Etc.
Static compilation is not needed for numeric computing which Julia is great at. However, Julia is advertised as a general purpose language, which IMO is obvious in your "What is Julia?" section. You pose Julia as a mighty language for everything and your supporters think this way, too. I have had conversations with multiple Julia supporters who thought Julia ought to replace python and even C. When people like jampekka pointed out Julia lacks necessary features to make this happen, these supporters got defensive and made absurd claims beyond their domain of knowledge.
Ah yes, Python, the famously statically compiled general-purpose programming language :p
More seriously though, just because some language may be considered "general purpose" doesn't mean it's the best language for everything, or should replace other languages outside of whichever particular applications where it excels.
Re:Julia 1.6 addresses latency issues
by ChrisRackauckas on Saturday May 29, 2021 @05:43AM
(#27324130)
>You pose Julia as a mighty language for everything
No I don't. It needs some work in some places.
No, you're not stupid. You've correctly identified current flaws in the tools, and the community tries to lead you to the tools that are known to work well in spite of the issues. We need to work a little bit more on the other tools to make them as good, but large parts of the community are just not the right people to work on that problem. It's not a design problem, it's fixable, but you just have more people who know how to make new differential equation solvers than you have people who can compile a binary, so the tooling ecosystem moves at a different pace from the scientific packages. This is changing with the help of some commercialization aspects though, but it is something we have to be cognizant of.