On Friday, August 21, 2015 at 10:55:52 PM UTC-4, Erik Schnetter wrote: > > So Robert Griesemer's points (features important for a new language to be > successful) are: > 1. clear target > 2. solid implementation: language, libraries, and tools > 3. market readiness > 4. technological breakthrough > 5. language features without competitors > > I think Julia has all of 1 to 4. > > If I understand correctly, "language features without competitors" means > that there is basically only one way to do a certain thing, not many, so > that one doesn't have to make meaningless decisions when implementing an > algorithm. I don't think Julia has this; instead of striving for > minimalistic clarity only, Julia often seems to cater to the casual script > programmer. > <http://www.perimeterinstitute.ca/personal/eschnetter/> >
I thought by "language features without competitors" he meant "things that are much easier in the language than in any competing language", i.e. "killer features". In Julia's case, I think that is "high performance technical computing in a high-level dynamic language." (Although Julia has other relatively unusual features for mainstream languages as well, e.g. metaprogramming and multiple dispatch, it is clear that the main "hook" to draw in technical users is performance + productivity).
