[julia-users] Re: good time to start to learn julia?
My answer to these questions is always the same these days: if you're not sure that you have enough expertise to determine Julia's value for yourself, then you should be cautious and stick to playing around with Julia rather than trying to jump onboard wholesale. Julia is a wonderful language and it's very usable for many things, but you shouldn't expect that you can do all (or even most) of your work in Julia unless you're confident that you can do the development work required to implement any functionality that you find to be missing. Depending on your specific interests, you might find that Julia is missing nothing or you might find that Julia is missing everything. -- John On Thursday, June 18, 2015 at 7:27:52 AM UTC-7, J.Z. wrote: Hi, I have been following julia for some time and have seen lots of positive comments. There are still lots of good work being put into its development. I use R and Python to do lots of technical (statistical) computing and would like to try julia for my work. My quick question to the current users and developers is that whether it is a good time to learn julia now, or should I wait until the language is more mature? Could it be the case that things I learn now would be broken in future releases and I have to relearn everything? Thanks! JZ
[julia-users] Re: good time to start to learn julia?
Ditto 110% to what Seth and Tom just said... and I only heard of Julia 3 months ago, and started contributing on GitHub less than 2 months ago... I still like C for some things (and Julia interfaces wonderfully with C), but as for any other languages... I'd really prefer to just forget them!) On Thursday, June 18, 2015 at 11:29:33 AM UTC-4, Seth wrote: On Thursday, June 18, 2015 at 9:58:05 AM UTC-5, Tom Breloff wrote: Will the language change? Yes. Will you have to relearn things? Yes. Will new releases break code? Yes. Should you start using Julia now? YES! The language is fairly mature, considering its age. I've been using Julia exclusively for 8 months now. I used to do C/C++/Python/R and also Java/Matlab. If I never have to program in any of those languages again, I'll be a happy man. Commit to learning the Julian way of doing things, and you won't regret it. Just wanted to voice my strong agreement with this response. I, too, started using Julia exclusively about 8 months ago (after a frustrating false start). It's a great language that makes it easy to develop working, fast code.
[julia-users] Re: good time to start to learn julia?
Will the language change? Yes. Will you have to relearn things? Yes. Will new releases break code? Yes. Should you start using Julia now? YES! The language is fairly mature, considering its age. I've been using Julia exclusively for 8 months now. I used to do C/C++/Python/R and also Java/Matlab. If I never have to program in any of those languages again, I'll be a happy man. Commit to learning the Julian way of doing things, and you won't regret it. On Thursday, June 18, 2015 at 10:27:52 AM UTC-4, J.Z. wrote: Hi, I have been following julia for some time and have seen lots of positive comments. There are still lots of good work being put into its development. I use R and Python to do lots of technical (statistical) computing and would like to try julia for my work. My quick question to the current users and developers is that whether it is a good time to learn julia now, or should I wait until the language is more mature? Could it be the case that things I learn now would be broken in future releases and I have to relearn everything? Thanks! JZ
[julia-users] Re: good time to start to learn julia?
On Thursday, June 18, 2015 at 9:58:05 AM UTC-5, Tom Breloff wrote: Will the language change? Yes. Will you have to relearn things? Yes. Will new releases break code? Yes. Should you start using Julia now? YES! The language is fairly mature, considering its age. I've been using Julia exclusively for 8 months now. I used to do C/C++/Python/R and also Java/Matlab. If I never have to program in any of those languages again, I'll be a happy man. Commit to learning the Julian way of doing things, and you won't regret it. Just wanted to voice my strong agreement with this response. I, too, started using Julia exclusively about 8 months ago (after a frustrating false start). It's a great language that makes it easy to develop working, fast code.
[julia-users] Re: good time to start to learn julia?
I should have been more specific. I am just wondering if the core language itself (syntax etc.) would change a lot in the future or not. I am not expecting that Julia has a specific package that R provides. But then it's good to know whether the fundamentals like basic visualization and optimization functions are mature or not. On Thursday, June 18, 2015 at 10:57:08 AM UTC-4, John Myles White wrote: My answer to these questions is always the same these days: if you're not sure that you have enough expertise to determine Julia's value for yourself, then you should be cautious and stick to playing around with Julia rather than trying to jump onboard wholesale. Julia is a wonderful language and it's very usable for many things, but you shouldn't expect that you can do all (or even most) of your work in Julia unless you're confident that you can do the development work required to implement any functionality that you find to be missing. Depending on your specific interests, you might find that Julia is missing nothing or you might find that Julia is missing everything. -- John On Thursday, June 18, 2015 at 7:27:52 AM UTC-7, J.Z. wrote: Hi, I have been following julia for some time and have seen lots of positive comments. There are still lots of good work being put into its development. I use R and Python to do lots of technical (statistical) computing and would like to try julia for my work. My quick question to the current users and developers is that whether it is a good time to learn julia now, or should I wait until the language is more mature? Could it be the case that things I learn now would be broken in future releases and I have to relearn everything? Thanks! JZ
Re: [julia-users] Re: good time to start to learn julia?
Yes, good points all... I'd also point out that there is a Compat.jl package, as well as a deprecation facility, that help smooth over most of the syntax changes that happen in Julia... On Thursday, June 18, 2015 at 12:38:28 PM UTC-4, Isaiah wrote: I am just wondering if the core language itself (syntax etc.) would change a lot in the future or not. I think there is an important distinction to be made here: - depending on the features you use, parts of your code will almost certainly break from 0.3 - 0.4 - 0.5 - As John said, these changes are (a) usually beneficial overall, and (b) usually not tremendously hard to adapt to (and will hopefully become easier over time as debugging tools and things like Lint.jl mature) - your mental model *mostly* shouldn't. Julia probably won't be dropping garbage collection, adopting whitespace-denoted blocks, switching to 0-based indexing (don't ask...), adopting an Idris-level of strictness in the type system, etc. Hopefully I don't eat my words, but this shouldn't be like Rust 0.3 - 1.0 where a similar-looking but remarkably changed language emerged over the years [not meant as a criticism, btw: Rust's open development process specifically, and overall community, are very inspirational] On Thu, Jun 18, 2015 at 11:34 AM, J.Z. jianl...@gmail.com javascript: wrote: I should have been more specific. I am just wondering if the core language itself (syntax etc.) would change a lot in the future or not. I am not expecting that Julia has a specific package that R provides. But then it's good to know whether the fundamentals like basic visualization and optimization functions are mature or not. On Thursday, June 18, 2015 at 10:57:08 AM UTC-4, John Myles White wrote: My answer to these questions is always the same these days: if you're not sure that you have enough expertise to determine Julia's value for yourself, then you should be cautious and stick to playing around with Julia rather than trying to jump onboard wholesale. Julia is a wonderful language and it's very usable for many things, but you shouldn't expect that you can do all (or even most) of your work in Julia unless you're confident that you can do the development work required to implement any functionality that you find to be missing. Depending on your specific interests, you might find that Julia is missing nothing or you might find that Julia is missing everything. -- John On Thursday, June 18, 2015 at 7:27:52 AM UTC-7, J.Z. wrote: Hi, I have been following julia for some time and have seen lots of positive comments. There are still lots of good work being put into its development. I use R and Python to do lots of technical (statistical) computing and would like to try julia for my work. My quick question to the current users and developers is that whether it is a good time to learn julia now, or should I wait until the language is more mature? Could it be the case that things I learn now would be broken in future releases and I have to relearn everything? Thanks! JZ
[julia-users] Re: good time to start to learn julia?
John Myles was right on when he said this: ...unless you're confident that you can do the development work required to implement any functionality that you find to be missing. That's true, but it is also very true that fixing any problems or implementing missing functionality (if you have the time) can be quite rewarding (if you can survive a *very* grueling and thorough review process, if you want to add or change anything to the core language). I've learned so much in a short time by all the great advice during the review process, that it's been well worth it (frustrating at times, but *don't* lose your patience, and many people are willing to donate a lot of their own time to help out) Scott
Re: [julia-users] Re: good time to start to learn julia?
I am just wondering if the core language itself (syntax etc.) would change a lot in the future or not. I think there is an important distinction to be made here: - depending on the features you use, parts of your code will almost certainly break from 0.3 - 0.4 - 0.5 - As John said, these changes are (a) usually beneficial overall, and (b) usually not tremendously hard to adapt to (and will hopefully become easier over time as debugging tools and things like Lint.jl mature) - your mental model *mostly* shouldn't. Julia probably won't be dropping garbage collection, adopting whitespace-denoted blocks, switching to 0-based indexing (don't ask...), adopting an Idris-level of strictness in the type system, etc. Hopefully I don't eat my words, but this shouldn't be like Rust 0.3 - 1.0 where a similar-looking but remarkably changed language emerged over the years [not meant as a criticism, btw: Rust's open development process specifically, and overall community, are very inspirational] On Thu, Jun 18, 2015 at 11:34 AM, J.Z. jianlin...@gmail.com wrote: I should have been more specific. I am just wondering if the core language itself (syntax etc.) would change a lot in the future or not. I am not expecting that Julia has a specific package that R provides. But then it's good to know whether the fundamentals like basic visualization and optimization functions are mature or not. On Thursday, June 18, 2015 at 10:57:08 AM UTC-4, John Myles White wrote: My answer to these questions is always the same these days: if you're not sure that you have enough expertise to determine Julia's value for yourself, then you should be cautious and stick to playing around with Julia rather than trying to jump onboard wholesale. Julia is a wonderful language and it's very usable for many things, but you shouldn't expect that you can do all (or even most) of your work in Julia unless you're confident that you can do the development work required to implement any functionality that you find to be missing. Depending on your specific interests, you might find that Julia is missing nothing or you might find that Julia is missing everything. -- John On Thursday, June 18, 2015 at 7:27:52 AM UTC-7, J.Z. wrote: Hi, I have been following julia for some time and have seen lots of positive comments. There are still lots of good work being put into its development. I use R and Python to do lots of technical (statistical) computing and would like to try julia for my work. My quick question to the current users and developers is that whether it is a good time to learn julia now, or should I wait until the language is more mature? Could it be the case that things I learn now would be broken in future releases and I have to relearn everything? Thanks! JZ
[julia-users] Re: good time to start to learn julia?
There will definitely still be some languages to the core language. But, in my experience, the changes to the core language are seldom very burdensome. They're almost always large improvements to the language, so the code that you have to rewrite ends up being vastly easier to maintain. This, for example, was my experience when both default and keyword arguments were introduced into the language. That said, I do spend a lot of time working on Julia code so I'm not so upset by the maintenance overhead. Sounds like a lot of the newer arrivals to Julia are even more positive than I am, so it can't hurt to try. -- John On Thursday, June 18, 2015 at 9:01:52 AM UTC-7, J.Z. wrote: I should have been more specific. I am just wondering if the core language itself (syntax etc.) would change a lot in the future or not. I am not expecting that Julia has a specific package that R provides. But then it's good to know whether the fundamentals like basic visualization and optimization functions are mature or not. On Thursday, June 18, 2015 at 10:57:08 AM UTC-4, John Myles White wrote: My answer to these questions is always the same these days: if you're not sure that you have enough expertise to determine Julia's value for yourself, then you should be cautious and stick to playing around with Julia rather than trying to jump onboard wholesale. Julia is a wonderful language and it's very usable for many things, but you shouldn't expect that you can do all (or even most) of your work in Julia unless you're confident that you can do the development work required to implement any functionality that you find to be missing. Depending on your specific interests, you might find that Julia is missing nothing or you might find that Julia is missing everything. -- John On Thursday, June 18, 2015 at 7:27:52 AM UTC-7, J.Z. wrote: Hi, I have been following julia for some time and have seen lots of positive comments. There are still lots of good work being put into its development. I use R and Python to do lots of technical (statistical) computing and would like to try julia for my work. My quick question to the current users and developers is that whether it is a good time to learn julia now, or should I wait until the language is more mature? Could it be the case that things I learn now would be broken in future releases and I have to relearn everything? Thanks! JZ
[julia-users] Re: good time to start to learn julia?
Thanks for those strong voices. Will spend more time on Julia! On Thursday, June 18, 2015 at 11:39:06 AM UTC-4, Scott Jones wrote: Ditto 110% to what Seth and Tom just said... and I only heard of Julia 3 months ago, and started contributing on GitHub less than 2 months ago... I still like C for some things (and Julia interfaces wonderfully with C), but as for any other languages... I'd really prefer to just forget them!) On Thursday, June 18, 2015 at 11:29:33 AM UTC-4, Seth wrote: On Thursday, June 18, 2015 at 9:58:05 AM UTC-5, Tom Breloff wrote: Will the language change? Yes. Will you have to relearn things? Yes. Will new releases break code? Yes. Should you start using Julia now? YES! The language is fairly mature, considering its age. I've been using Julia exclusively for 8 months now. I used to do C/C++/Python/R and also Java/Matlab. If I never have to program in any of those languages again, I'll be a happy man. Commit to learning the Julian way of doing things, and you won't regret it. Just wanted to voice my strong agreement with this response. I, too, started using Julia exclusively about 8 months ago (after a frustrating false start). It's a great language that makes it easy to develop working, fast code.
