
Possible Python rival? Programming language Julia is winning over developers - joeyespo
https://www.zdnet.com/article/possible-python-rival-programming-language-julia-is-winning-over-developers/
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21
I'll just leave this here:

> _Conventionally, Julia 's arrays are indexed starting at 1_

[https://www.google.com/search?q=arrays%20start%20at%201&tbm=...](https://www.google.com/search?q=arrays%20start%20at%201&tbm=isch)

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chriskanan
The default is 1, but...

 _> Julia supports arrays with arbitrary indices._

[https://docs.julialang.org/en/latest/devdocs/offset-
arrays/](https://docs.julialang.org/en/latest/devdocs/offset-arrays/)

I personally haven't had any problem with 1-indexing when I used to program a
lot in MATLAB. Maybe that's because I first learned to program using
QuickBasic, which has 1-indexing. I don't understand the passion for
0-indexing (I know the arguments).

~~~
bb88
From that document:

    
    
       This code implicitly assumes that vectors are indexed
       from 1; if dest starts at a different index than src,
       there is a chance that this code would trigger a
       segfault. (If you do get segfaults, to help locate the
       cause try running julia with the option --check-bounds=yes.)
    

So it comes with a tradeoff, namely that if someone else chose different
bounds on an array other than [1..n] and you try to access it the standard
way, you'll get a segfault.

This would scare me away from using anything other than the default indexing
on an array in Julia.

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alexandernst
Unless Julia can gather the uncountable amount of libraries and frameworks
(and keeping the same quality) it’s doomed to be just another “me too”
language.

It’s not about the language itself, but what can you actually make with it and
with its ecosystem.

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bluejekyll
By this logic, no new language would ever take off.

> It’s not about the language itself

I would actually argue that it’s completely about the language itself. There
will be a certain number of people that recognize the value of the new
language. Those people will start laying the groundwork for all the libraries
that they need. For those people, the early zealots, they build out the
minimal set of libraries.

Then you have the next group of people come along, less fanatical, but really
like the language, and decide to make bets on it, where they fill in the gaps
that they encounter.

In the next phase you now have the basics needed for the language, a growing
number of users, and the libraries start flowing in. All of this would only
happen because people really like the language itself.

> it’s doomed to be just another “me too” language.

I have no idea where Julia is, I’ve never used it, but I dislike this
attitude, because it doesn’t allow for innovation. Julia certainly _seems_ to
be gaining users, just based on how much I keep hearing about it.

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bb88
> By this logic, no new language would ever take off.

And in many cases they haven't. Javascript competitors seem like a prime
example of this as there are too many javascript libraries that make your life
easier, and would have to be ported to a new language.

What makes a language successful primarily is how easy it is to do productive
things with it -- and that means easily using existing code (from some other
language).

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mping
JavaScript has been a victim of its own success in many ways. It's so popular
that other languages just transpile to js. In the end it runs js, but it
doesn't matter much.

OTOH good libraries have bindings for the source language (eg react has
wrappers in scalajs, clojurescript, etc)

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zunzun
Django + Julia = Djangulia

