I've been learning Julia as my first programming language, if I don't count the VB I learned in high school tech and the small amount of R I learned to pass STAT 201.
For me, Julia has been an excellent first first language. The syntax is friendly and accessible, so it's easy to get started working on a project right away. But the design of Julia is very rich, and it offers a lot of rabbit holes one can follow after you become comfortable with the basics of the language. From my small projects I found myself wanting to implement ideas that naturally led me to explore Julia's introspection and metaprogramming facilities as well as means of optimizing a Julia program for performance. Through those explorations I've been exposed to a number of (what I suppose are) core concepts in CS and programming languages. Also, it's true that Julia is changing rapidly, but if you're able to pay attention to the developments and follow the issues and discussions on GitHub then they are also an excellent opportunity to learn about a variety of topics in programming. (And it's just really cool to see a language develop right before your eyes.) So, I've been very happy with my choice. However, I'll add a caveat. I've been very fortunate in that I've found for myself a situation that lets me work on Julia projects pretty much full-time amongst a cohort of programmers who are devoting their time to improving their skills and exploring programming as a whole. I've also been very fortunate to meet members of the Julia community who have been generous with their time in helping me figure out problems I've encountered. I think that having such an environment where I've been free to explore the language and learn by doing without the deadlines of, say, a course curriculum looming over me has been a big reason why I've found Julia such a productive first language. If your situation doesn't allow you to take the time to handle some of the rougher edges of the language or pore through hundreds of comments strewn throughout dozens of GitHub issues, then you may encounter difficulties enough to weigh against choosing Julia for a first language. On Tuesday, August 4, 2015 at 8:34:40 AM UTC-7, phineas vang wrote: > > Hi, > > Just wondering if Julia is a good choice as a first programming language > to learn. I have limited experience in vba for MS Office apps and SQL but > these may not be considered true programming languages. > > Thanks
