Re: does a safer language mean it is slower to run?

[Jerry <list_email@icloud.com>]

On Thursday, June 8, 2023 at 1:00:55 AM UTC-7, Dmitry A. Kazakov wrote:
> I think comparison is misplaced. Julia is an interpreted language, very 
> slow, on par with Python. It has memory mapped arrays like Ada does, but 
> lacks Python's precompiled modules. The syntax is wonderfully arbitrary 
> and unpredictable...
[I guess this is OT.] Julia is a hot mess. Rather than being interpreted, it uses a just-in-time compiler, so they claim they have the solution to the "two-language problem" of prototyping in a slow language such as Python then re-writing in a compiled language for speed. There are problems. Julia has a bad habit of forgetting that it compiled a program before (no saved binary between sessions) so it has to re-compile it each time. (I think there are work-arounds  but not intended for mere mortals.) Julia folks seem to have invented the phrase "time to first plot" because much of the Julia ecosystem is written in Julia so it has to go off and compile the plotters before you can make the first plot, or something like that. However, using Julia in Visual Studio Code where there is a very nice notebook Jupyter environment plus a very clever hybrid of a REPL and standard editor, is quite delightful. There is a set of officially published instructions for getting maximum speed from Julia https://docs.julialang.org/en/v1/manual/performance-tips; when printed as as PDF, it spans 36 pages and uses terminology and concepts that only an expert will know. People love Julia for its multiple-dispatch feature whereby it automatically generates a different version of a subroutine for every combination of argument and result that it can discover. (This behavior can be overridden by using ----- optional typing!) If you think dynamic typing is 180 degrees from strong typing, I would suggest that it is now only 90 degrees from strong typing, with Julia's brand new opportunities for accidentally calling a subroutine that you didn't even know existed now occupying the 180 degree position.