This might seem like just a reframing of the situation, rather than an answer, but I personally don't think there's any background knowledge you need to get started using Julia. What you need is a willingness to figure out what's going on by doing some digging through the manual, the general web and the Julia codebase for the language. The manual gives you enough to get started using the language, but assumes that some standard Unix commands are familiar like STDOUT. But that sort of stuff is very well documented on the web, since it's a core part of computing culture outside of the Windows world. And when you need to get examples of how people write large amounts of code in Julia, you can read the source code for the core libraries in Base, which is a canonical example of how Julia should be written.
-- John On Jul 18, 2014, at 9:49 AM, Michael Bullman <[email protected]> wrote: > Hey Everyone, I'm very interested in learning Julia, but I feel like I'm > missing some crucial background knowledge to really understand how Julia > works. Just to give you guys my background, My first language was Java in > high school, I got fairly good using it then, but in college I only barely > maintained the skill. I took a couple low level programming course to stay > somewhat fresh, and some CS 101 type courses and a data structures course. > Other than that my knowledge is spread around a bit using some Python, but > mainly R of late. > > Some things in the Julia notation feel familiar to me, Types remind me of > Java objects, I can generally "read" code in examples. But many things feel > unfamiliar. It makes me think that there is some base of knowledge is assumed > with Julia that I do not have. > > My first Julia project is pretty silly compared to most people. I'm trying to > write a "Lunch-roulette" Program to help me and my co-worker/buddies choose > where to go for lunch on break. While I was looking for simple I/O > instructions so we can enter several lunch spots, and times. I realized I > had no idea how to use the IOStream or STDIN/OUT functionality. Looks like a > lot of this is based off of C++ and Unix command line functionality. > > Sorry if this was a long winded question, but basically, what do I need to > know before I can start learning to use Julia? > > Thanks, > -Mike
