What's Great about Julia?
when choosing a foreign language to learn most normal people would not examine which one has the most elegant grammar, the most performant representation of information or any such abstract design elements.<p>people ask instead: whom will I be able to communicate with. what kind of cultural repository (wealth) do I get access to. how will <i>I</i> benefit to justify spending the limited opportunities I have to reprogram my brain.<p>the programmer-to-programmer aspect of computer languages is not appreciated enough, especially not in the modern, highly networked and open source way of developing software. yes, the primary purpose is to marshal ones and zeros in silicon chips and it does matter if the language helps you do that in a sane way but this is just one of the many factors people consider.<p>I think, unfortunately for Julia and other aspiring challengers, right now the primary social network dynamics among developers is &quot;winner takes all&quot;. e.g., its not a deep secret that the meteoric rize of python is because it enabled countless people to aspire to be part of the perceived AI&#x2F;ML&#x2F;FAANG gold rush. Over time programmer eyeballs motivate investment in ecosystem evolution and a benign spiral is set in motion.<p>I don&#x27;t have a crystal ball as to when&#x2F;if&#x2F;how the current pyfever might cool down. You can&#x27;t predict those things, they are an emergent property of our very complex networks. Maybe some killer feature or julia or rust or go or dart or kotlin will trigger some regime change, but unless it does, any discussions of alternate greatness have a distinct detached feeling to them.