Julia: A Fast Dynamic Language for Technical Computing

TL;DR

Julia is a newly developed dynamic programming language tailored for technical computing that combines high performance with expressive syntax by leveraging modern language design techniques and type inference.

Contribution

The paper introduces Julia, a dynamic language that achieves high performance through innovative design, enabling efficient scientific computing and seamless integration with existing libraries.

Findings

Julia offers competitive performance with C and Fortran libraries.

The language supports expressive programming with rich type inference.

Much of Julia's ecosystem is implemented in Julia itself.

Abstract

Dynamic languages have become popular for scientific computing. They are generally considered highly productive, but lacking in performance. This paper presents Julia, a new dynamic language for technical computing, designed for performance from the beginning by adapting and extending modern programming language techniques. A design based on generic functions and a rich type system simultaneously enables an expressive programming model and successful type inference, leading to good performance for a wide range of programs. This makes it possible for much of the Julia library to be written in Julia itself, while also incorporating best-of-breed C and Fortran libraries.