I don't want to disparage Julia, it's actually a very nice language, and I was very excited to learn it a couple of years ago.
But, honestly, I think their adoption at this point is less "linux-like" driven and much more "apple-like". In that, the language is 'ok', but the company is going to INCREDIBLE lengths with respect to shrewd marketing and buzz-creation at this point.
Which is admirable but also kinda worrying at the same time.
This "Julia marketing conspiracy theory" that many people on HN seem to believe is so bizarre. What big tech company do you think is behind this incredible, shrewd and presumably well-funded marketing campaign? Julia is the only new major programming language of the last decade that doesn't have a major tech giant backing it. Adoption and development are pretty much entirely grass roots. If you see a lot of enthusiastic posts about Julia on HN, that's because there are a lot of actual people out there using Julia who love it and write posts about it.
Hi Lyndon. Yes, but that's exactly what I meant! I think my phrasing was off. For a company of that size, I've seen very good activity promoting the julia brand, both officially and through word-of-mouth networks. (your own Cambridge meetups notwithstanding). Therefore, I think much of the hype is at least partly that, rather than just the technical merits of the language (which I agree it has plenty). I don't remember this kind of 'buzz' before v1. Back then it was just people who saw promise in its features. Now people seem to be promoting it quite actively.
I've seen a shift in the winds, that's all I'm saying. I wasn't mean to come off so negative. (certainly not as negative as Chris took it!)
Thanks for the explanation. I feel that Julia has always been well received on HN ever since we publicly announced it in 2012. I believe that post v1, there are just more users out there and more blogs are being written, more companies are using it, more universities are teaching it, and hence more stories are making their way to HN.
Nowadays, I find new Julia stories and posts when they show up on HN (as opposed to a few years ago when all you had to do was follow juliabloggers).
Hey, the Julia open source organization did have an undergrad in his senior year working part time on community management though. Can't leave that out. We don't know if JetBrain or Mozilla had something like that.
@StefanKarpinski I said none of those things. I didn't mean to hit a nerve. I actually agree with you. I was one of those grassroots people who enthusiastically tried to get friends to try it. Perhaps 'shrewd marketing' didn't come off as positive as it sounded in my mind.
PS. One forgets people like Stefan and Jeff are likely to be on HN. Apologies. I'd have been a bit more careful in my choice of words otherwise.
The buzz you see is almost all from people who switched from other languages and found that Julia was a gigantic breath of fresh air. I can say that for me, it completely changed my attitude towards programming in general. Before, programming was something I did sometimes as part of my physics research. Now, it’s also my hobby that I probably spend too much time on.
It’s hard not to get a little evangelical when you go through a change like this.
Yes, they went to INCREDIBLE lengths by, umm, spending a number of years creating an excellent language which drew enthusiastic folks who created INCREDIBLE packages on top of that base.
Seriously, when I learned Python (about 20 years ago) I thought it was amazing, and it was, because it let me do things I wouldn't have otherwise done (by reducing the cognitive load on the programming side so I could think more about my problem than the code).
Julia's giving me that kick again - more expressive than Python, doesn't just glue things together but integrates them, and can make code as fast as any language.
But, honestly, I think their adoption at this point is less "linux-like" driven and much more "apple-like". In that, the language is 'ok', but the company is going to INCREDIBLE lengths with respect to shrewd marketing and buzz-creation at this point.
Which is admirable but also kinda worrying at the same time.