Introduction to Julia

This workshop aims to introduce both users of scripting languages and advanced programmers to the Julia ecosystem, and explore details about the Julia language which can help produce efficient and readable code.

This workshop aims to introduce both users of scripting languages and advanced programmers to the Julia ecosystem, and explore details about the Julia language which can help produce efficient and readable code.

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Julia is a relatively new language which has been making waves in the scientific community due to its ease of use as a scripting language combined with its ability to produce programs with comparable runtimes to C/Fortran. For this reason, Julia is situated is fast becoming a major language in high-performance and “big data” computing. However, the current state of the Julia ecosystem can be intimidating to much of its target audience, which is both high-level scriptors (using MATLAB/Python/R) all the way to developers of high-performance libraries (using C/Fortran). This workshop is aims to introduce both users of scripting languages and advanced programmers to the Julia ecosystem, and explore details about the Julia language which can help produce efficient and readable code. The goal of the workshop is for students to understand where Julia can be applied and be well-equipped to start using Julia in their own research. Students will learn about the current state of Julia development (IDEs, documentation, where to get help), how to write efficient code by understanding some of Julia’s internals via small projects, solve problems using advanced Julia features (metaprogramming, multiple-dispatch, etc.), and learn workarounds to common issues newcomers face (scoping problems, type conversions, etc.). Near the end of the workshop, participants will break out into groups to solve problems which mirror research problems in data science and scientific computing.

Date:May 24, 2016
Time: 9 am to 1 pm
Location: Donald Bren Hall, Room 3011
Instructor: Chris Rackauckas
Pre-requisites: Previous experience with a scripting language (R/Python/MATLAB etc.).