IMO there is no way to ensure that a new language like Julia will live (= have a viable, active community which keeps improving the language and the libraries) over a 5-year timeframe. I really hope it will, but there is no way to be sure.
That said, since it is open source, the client will always have a version which can run the program you wrote a while ago, possibly with a bit of tweaking. Talking about a 5 year interval, my primary concern as a client would not be Julia dying, but the opposite: I would be concerned that the language is moving too fast, and keeping the code up to date will require continuous work (even if one sticks to the stable releases). Best, Tamas On Thu, Mar 12 2015, Ken B wrote: > Back on topic, I just convinced a client to use Julia with my current > project. It will be an online image processing tool. The other choices were > Matlab and Python with C#. > > The fast speed and short development time were the deciding factors here, > but the biggest drawback was the risk that the language might die in 5 > years. Any material that I could use if that argument comes up again? > > Ken > > On Sunday, 8 March 2015 11:41:12 UTC+1, Joachim Dahl wrote: >> >> The package is very similiar to Gloptipoly or SparsePOP, and it can be >> found here: >> https://github.com/joachimdahl/Polyopt.jl >> >> It was a design decision to keep the API close to the formulation of the >> Lasserre hierarchy, so that there is a close correspondence between the >> problem you specify and the actual semidefinite problem you solve. Yalmip >> and SOSTOOL have much more flexible modeling capabilities, but it becomes >> less transparent what the resulting SDP is. >> >> There is no documentation yet, but the tests show how to use it. There are >> some SOS examples, but actually the toolbox started as tool for forming the >> Lasserre hierarchy while exploiting chordal sparisty structure. I don't >> think many things will change, except for perhaps different ways to exploit >> sparsity in SOS certficates; if you want to solve polynomial problems >> using the Lasserre hierarchy it's probably useful already now, but not as >> an alternative to Yalmip or SOSTOOL. >> >> The plan is to have it finished by summer and present it at a software >> session at ISMP. >> >> On Sun, Mar 8, 2015 at 10:45 AM, Davide Lasagna <[email protected] >> <javascript:>> wrote: >> >>> Joachim, would you share this toolbox for polynomial optimisation? Is it >>> on GitHub? >>> I guess you wrote something's equivalent to yalmip or sostools. Did you >>> compare performances? >>> Davide >> >> >>
