Julia is great ... if you are willing to work with the Goldilocks zone it provides.

I think what happened is this: Julia got advertised as "Python syntax, C speed" but in practice it turns out to really be "Python syntax, 50% of C speed if you were willing to avoid some semi-well-documented gotchas, where avoiding said gotchas will take some non-trivial effort". Again, great if you are willing to work with it.

I am not saying that the Julia people are responsible for the "Python syntax, C speed" perception as much as that was what the prevalent perception became. And

I have talked to people in computational biology who tried Julia, and they said something or the other similar to "It just wasn't performant enough for me to give up Python," and if you really dig in, what really happened was when new people tried Julia with old mental models, they walked away thinking, "Heh, more MIT hypeware."

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simondanisch 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

well I've been reaching 100% of c Speed Most of the time which feels like an easy effort... I guess it depends on the problem a bit and how used you're to writing optimized, clean Julia code

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leephillips 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Polyglot Jet Finding:

https://arxiv.org/abs/2309.17309

This paper in experimental high-energy physics is a good example of why Julia is popular for scientific calculations.

It shows that #julialang is over 100 times faster than Python and even faster than C++.

	▲	Rijanhastwoears 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		So, my original comment really boils down to the idea that "public perception has nothing to do with objective stats". To which your response is ... citing a paper at me. To reiterate, citing studies that show that smoking causes cancer in chain smokers does ... nothing. You are citing studies, but I am not the chain smoker; I am just the guy talking about chain smokers. One more time, I wish we lived in a world where public perception was swayed by objective studies, but we don't. Julia is fast, yes, but when a university sys-admin rolls their eyes at hearing its name, you have lost the battle for well and good.