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qKrfKwMI13 karma

This one is for /u/StefanKarpinski

After having spent quite some time through the github issue tracker (which happens less now than it did a few years ago) and stackoverflow, I saw your profile picture so often that when I then finally saw a video with you in it I was a little bit disappointed that you weren't wearing a viking helmet like in the picture, so why don't you wear a viking helmet every day?

qKrfKwMI3 karma

First of all, I'm a big fan of Julia ever since I tried to interface CUDA code with (numpy) python, where it took me a long time just to figure out what interfacing package I should use. The contrast with the ease of callling compiled functions from julia couldn't have been greater. I rewrote my python code to julia and I was up and running in about a week. By now I'm totally hooked and feel quite limited by other languages, either because of performance ("should I really be writing this python loop?") or missing multiple dispatch.

  • I get that you wanted to release during JuliaCon, but wasn't it perhaps better if you had more time between the releases of 0.7 and 1.0 so more packages could get themselves 1.0 compatible for the release? It felt a bit disappointing for me when I tried installing packages after the great 1.0 release and got errors.

  • The programming paradigm of Julia, with the focus on multiple dispatch, is quite different from other, standard languages. In my experience, I found it not obvious how I should approach writing a module and making a good, reusable interface, for instance the dilemma between "Let the user put a function in a struct and call the function as t.f(...) or let the user subtype and define f(t::MyType, ...)", I'm still not sure (when) which is the right choice. As a (non-computer) scientist first, my programming skills are limited, which probably adds to my confusion, but do you know if some resources/guidelines have been developed for this kind of thing?

  • How soon after the release did you discover the analogue of that typo you see right after you press send on an email: that one bad thing that could/should have been fixed but now you're stuck with it because of the stability guarantees of 1.0.

Edit: Oh yeah, thank you so much for making this amazing language.

qKrfKwMI2 karma

Ooh, I just thought of another question:

On the one hand as language developers you hack away at language issues/problems, on the other hand there are people who use (features of) Julia for projects in ways you never would have imagined ahead of time. How did you manage to stay close to those people, such that you know what they want and need (which will not always be obvious, even to the users themselves)?