Thread: Julia devs get $600k

I couldn't find any confirmation to that news piece, except for a post on slashdot that unfortunately just points back to the that link. Julia blog also has no reference to it. I-Programmers gives absolutely no source. That's just poor journalism. I started to suspect it to be a lie, but eventually I got it at Moore Foundation, despite its terrible search engine.

It makes sense, considering the interests of this particular Foundation. Julia may be on a permanent development stasis, but it really is a necessary language. It just needs to work, which it sort of doesn't currently. Python is absolutely not the answer to complex scientific research due to its performance issues. And neither is R with its bigger focus on statistical analysis. Researchers everywhere would love to see Julia take off.

Earlier this year, the core team launched a startup, Julia Consulting LLC. With the purpose of providing services to individuals and companies using the language. This would allow them to work full time on the development of Julia. Essentially the typical strategy for many open source projects since Red Hat first did it. This grant comes probably in a good time. I could never see how they would be making money on Julia Consulting without a production-level programming language.

Best of luck to them. The language sort of sucks now. But this will eventually be what it takes for Julia to either show what it can do, or fold definitely.

Originally Posted by Epy

It's always sucked. Last time we had a thread on it I went and checked it out and came back to .......... because the Julia terminal on their site didn't even work.

I wouldn't go there. The problem -- why I said it sucks -- is simply the lack of a comprehensive library set and the current beta status that, both, conspire to make Julia more trouble than its worth. I'm sure a researcher anywhere is more interested in a solution to her problems, not a language that requires her to come up with her own libraries, or which core features are still under heavy development.

So, as I said, let's hope this is what it takes for the language to take off. Although I'm suspicious of what $600k can do that its absence wasn't doing, it is no less true that other languages did benefit from early funds. I'm thinking for instance, FORTRAN which no doubt benefited greatly in its early days from being an internal IBM project.

Originally Posted by Hodor

And this, folks, is what is wrong with the world. Their contribution to society or even the company is not that valuable.

It depends on their level of personal investment in the company, the size of the company, and the profitability of that company. People making lots of money is not what is wrong. It's people believing that they deserve some of that money, when they've done nothing to earn it, that is wrong. A guy working in the electronics department at Wal-Mart, who can't tell you the difference between 720p, 1080p, and 4K, does not deserve more than minimum wage. A girl working at McDonalds, who can't get your order right after you've repeated it three times, does not deserve more than minimum wage. If a CEO employs policies that make the company ridiculously profitable, that CEO deserves to be rewarded for his/her insights and leadership. Businesses don't become successful and employ millions of people by eschewing profitability, and no one would want to manage a giant corporation like that, without appropriate compensation. The amount of stress those guys are under, to earn dividends for shareholders, continue to employ all of their employees, and still grow the business is not to be underestimated. It's not just about making a living, at that level. It's about putting up with the stress and the BS of running a large business. The widening of the "pay gap," as it's often called, is a direct result of disastrous monetary policy by governments and central banks.