On Friday, December 5, 2014 11:34:46 AM UTC, Tamas Papp wrote: > > > On Fri, Dec 05 2014, Páll Haraldsson <pall.ha...@gmail.com <javascript:>> > wrote: > > > On Friday, December 5, 2014 8:54:26 AM UTC, Tamas Papp wrote: > >> > >> I find your aversion to femtolisp difficult to understand, probably > >> because I tend to think of Julia as a Lisp with the following key > >> features: > >> > > > > I don't really have an aversion to femtolisp. I understand it's an > awesome > > implementation of Scheme. > > > > If you "think of Julia as a Lisp" (including Scheme, right?) then when > > would you prefer Lisp (or Scheme) for new things after Julia came along? > > Sorry, but did you read my e-mail? As I said, Julia is much more > optimizable
> with its richer type system, which is a great advantage for > me. Common Lisp is remarkably nice, but Yes I did read it. Note, I meant would you still recommend (Common) Lisp for anything, you seem to argue well for Julia (and against "Lisp"/S-expressions while you're at it?). Note also, I said "would you prefer Lisp (or Scheme)". I know Scheme is a dialect of Lisp and Racket of Scheme, but am not expert on the differences. I may be grouping all the Lisps together unfairly. Your objections to Common Lisp may not generalize to them all. Personally, I like S-expressions too, but many people prefer > M-expressions, especially for math (they are indeed more compact). > Is there a good way to call any (or all) of the S-expressions languages from Julia? I'm not even sure it's important too, there could be lots of useful preexisting code. > >> I am not so > >> sure that current technology allows a single language to be good at > >> everything, languages like C seem to be difficult to replace with > >> dynamic languages in some situations. > > These are very abstract points, and I am not sure that discussing them > as such is very productive. As many have remarked in this thread, > languages are tools, designed for a given prupose. Is a hammer better > than a screwdriver? Etc. > Libraries are also "tools", I'm just not at all convinced we need many languages (for different "purposes", maybe with very few limited exceptions) rather than just new libraries. That seems to be a failure of computer science. > > Why? For C, Julia seems already better for almost all users. If > "languages > > like C" means C++, I could see all new code in Julia and C++ as legacy. > > What other "like C" do you mean? > > Again, I am wondering if you actually read the replies to your > questions. Many have remarked on these issues in their replies to you, > eg dynamic vs manual memory allocation, etc. C, C++, and Fortran are > fundamentally different from Julia at the moment. > I read all the replies (might have missed some). I already mentioned dynamic memory allocation in my first post as a temporary limitation (currently would be a problem for very few users/uses). Never programmed in Fortran but think it also uses manual memory allocation. While Julia uses those languages in part I think manual is not the reason for their (or Julia's) speed; in general that they are fundamentally different in a better way or others. Garbage collection can be hard real-time and fast (and Julia - the core language wouldn't need changes that break compatibility). or by > helping to discover where it could be improved. > > Partly why I'm writing this. I want to know what needs improving or if something can't be improved, unless breaking things in a minor way or fundamentally that Julia can't work. > Frankly, I don't understand your decision problem -- are you trying to > decide whether to invest learning in Julia vs some other language? Even > though that question does not have a well-defined answer either, it is > possible that you would get more useful advice. > Yes, I'm not too worried about me. I don't think I'm wasting time learning (more about) Julia, I just do not want to point people to it if there are even better languages available or if there is some defect in Julia I'm missing. It seems to be a good first language to learn, not just for "matrix methods" (is that all the Universities have started teaching with Julia?). Best regards, Palli.
