alt Hacker NewsThese are exactly the feelings that I left with from the community in ~2021 (along with the AD story, which never really materialized _within_ Julia - Enzyme had to come from outside Julia to “save it” - or materialized in a way (Zygote) whose compilation times were absolutely unacceptable compared to competitors like JAX)
More and more over time, I’ve begun to think that the method JIT architecture is a mistake, that subtyping is a mistake.
Subtyping makes abundant sense when paired with multiple dispatch — so perhaps my qualms are not precise there … but it also seems like several designs for static interfaces have sort of bounced off the type system. Not sure, and can’t defend my claims very well.
Julia has much right, but a few things feel wrong in ways that spiral up to the limitations in features like this one.
Anyways, excited to check back next year to see myself proven wrong.
I basically agree with subtyping (but not multiple dispatch). More importantly, I think it's important to recognize that Julia has a niche that literally no one can compete with - interactive, dynamic and high performance.
Like, what exactly is the alternative? Python? Too slow. Static languages? Unusable for interactive exploration and data science.
That leaves you with hybrids, like Python/Cython, or Python/Rust or Numba, but taken on their own term, these are absolutely terrible languages. Python/Rust is not safe (due to FFI), certainly not pleasant to develop in, and no matter how you cut your code between the languages, you always lose. You always want your Python part to be in Rust so you get static analysis, safety and speed. You always want your Rust part to be in Python, so you can experiment with it easier and introspect.