Julia Programming Overview
Julia is a high-performance, open source computing language, mostly applied to data analysis, machine learning, and other scientific and technical computing applications.
The language combines the ease of use of Python or R with the speed of C and eliminates the need for using two languages to develop data intensive applications. It is as readable and high-level as Python and because of its type inference and optional typing, behaves as a dynamic language. It is also as fast as C, but much more readable. As a new programming language, Julia borrowed some of the best features from other modern languages. For example, like Ruby, it doesn’t use semicolons or curly braces for delimiting code; instead, it uses a more Pascal-like syntax, with end to indicate where a code structure stops.
Julia is not a classic object-oriented language like Java; instead, it is more function-oriented, but it also has a struct data type like C. Functions that act on and transform data are the basic building blocks. The language also has built-in parallel computing capabilities and can scale up very easily.
Julia also provides an extensive standard library from the start. The language’s usage and popularity are steadily rising; it has been downloaded by users from more than 10,000 companies and is used at over 1,500 universities worldwide (https://juliacomputing.com/media/2022/02/julia-turns-ten-years-old/).
This chapter will touch on the main Julia concepts we will need in web development including types, flow control, functions, packages, and modules. We will introduce some examples relating to the ToDo app project theme for Part 2 of this book.
We’ll also show code snippets from the Genie framework that are used in Part 2. We wrap up with a section on how Julia works internally, which makes us better understand Julia’s efficacy in web development. By the end of this chapter, your Julia knowledge will be refreshed, and you’ll be much better prepared to grasp the rest of the book.
In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:
- Working with Julia
- Types, flow controls, and functions in Julia
- Useful techniques in Julia web development
- Using Julia modules and packages
- How Julia works
- Why Julia is a good fit for web development
