[julia-users] good time to start to learn julia?
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?
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. >> >>
