Re:Show HN: A physically-based GPU ray tracer written in Julia
by bobajeff on Thursday February 19, 2026 @08:28AM
(#47073503)
As someone who currently uses dabbles in both. That prediction seems a bit unrealistic. Julia is a fantastic language but it has some trade offs that need to be considered. Probably the most well known is `time to first x`. Julia like Python is used comfortably in notebooks but loading libraries can take a minute, compared to Python where it happens right away. It may lead you to not reach for it when you want to do quick testing of something especially plotting. You can mitigate this somewhat by loading all the libraries you'll ever need at startup (preferably long before you are ready to experiment) but that assumes you already know what libraries you'll need for what you're wanting to try.
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Re:Show HN: A physically-based GPU ray tracer written in Julia
by simondanisch on Thursday February 19, 2026 @08:42AM
(#47073628)
What prediction? Maybe I need to rephrase what I said: My prediction is, that if Julia ever wants to have a shot at replacing Python, it absolutely has to solve the first time to first x problem!
That's what I mean by shipping fully ahead of time compiled binaries and interpreting more glue code - which both have the potential to solve the first time to x problem.
Re:Show HN: A physically-based GPU ray tracer written in Julia
by bobajeff on Thursday February 19, 2026 @08:56AM
(#47073748)
The prediction I was referring to was the one in the parent comment. (The one I was commenting under)
Re:Show HN: A physically-based GPU ray tracer written in Julia
by simondanisch on Thursday February 19, 2026 @09:00AM
(#47073789)
Ah sorry :D