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0 pointstfehring4y ago0 comments

I agree, but it's probably closer to 20 years IMO, which makes sense given that Python has been around for 21 years longer. By 2009 Python was already in widespread use at Google/YouTube and (I think) Mozilla, plus startups like Reddit and Dropbox. Hell, Steve Huffman wrote "Lots of people have written web applications in Python, and there's plenty of code from which to learn" as one justification for Reddit's Python rewrite in 2005 [0]. No one is saying that about Julia today, it's seeing very little use in the private sector at this point.

[0] http://web.archive.org/web/20051230163903/http://reddit.com/...

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2 comments · 2 top-level

adgjlsfhk14y ago

Julia has a decent amount of penetration in the private sector, just not in "tech". If you look at JuliaComputing's clients, you'll see a lot of private customers, they're just not the type that typically talks a lot about the tech they're using.

fault14y ago

I agree, personally I think it's a problem with Julia's initial "product" placement, which was probably a overfocus on the "technical computing" aspect.

Personally, the first version of python I used was 1.5.2 (in 1999). I learned it initially instead of the current 'scripting language' hegemon, which was perl. Since CGI was in extensive use at that time, this was the start of the python web backend ecosystem.

In the late 2000s, I was able to sneak in Python rewrites of MATLAB or Fortran code written by scientists, even in situations where Python was not officially sanctioned for that type of work (I was mainly a C++ developer, but would also write python bindings). I feel like it really was the strength of python's strength as a universal ducktape that caused the ecosystem growth of both the scientific _and_ web stacks.

Nowadays, I've really come to appreciate Julia from a novelty standpoint, and I'm intrigued at what it can do, especially in terms of probabilistic programming and other emerging fields, but in order to justify using Julia in more general 'professional programmer' settings, it needs to focus on what's made modern Python so successful. Otherwise, I could see it's fate as "merely" replacing a more niche language like MATLAB (which Python has /already/ managed to do for the most part).