As most other blogs about programming, this one will not be an exception and will briefly describe how to get started with Julia programming language. What will also be covered here, are some pros and cons that I have observed and experienced in my few years of using this language.
The first step would to visit Julia language website and download the Julia itself .
If you are starting, the best option would be "Current stable release" (which is v1.8.5 at the moment of writing) which will give you all newest features and compatibility with recently updated packages. LTS version would be your choice, "if you work at an organization where implementing or certifying upgrades is prohibitively expensive and there is no need for new language features or packages", as it is stated on the website. If you are looking for some specific version, you may want to visit this link, and if that is the case, you most probably know what are you doing.
Some detailed instructions for specific systems are listed below
wget command. Open terminal, navigate to a folder then use "wget link-to-selected-julia". If you downloaded compressed file, then use tar xzvf julia 1.X.Y-zzzz to unpack.Once downloaded and extracted, place it in e.g. /opt/julia folder. For convenience of running, you could make an alias or create a symlink, explained below.
Download .dmg file, open it and and drag and drop the "Julia.app" into your "Applications" folder (that's the default option) or wherever you keep your downloaded software.
Just download and install.
If you want to access Julia in the terminal, you may want to set up a shortcut to open it. This can be done in one of the following ways:
Creating a symlink from the installation folder to the /usr/local/bin folder to do that, you could use the command:
For linux-type system (with Julia unpacked to /opt/julia/):
ln -s /opt/julia/julia-1.X.Y/bin/julia /usr/local/bin/juliaFor MacOs (with Julia.app in Applications folder):
ln -s /Applications/Julia-1.X.app/Contents/Resources/julia/bin/julia /usr/local/bin/juliawhere ln is the unix command to create symlink, using -s command will crate a symbolic link, 1.X.Y is the version of downloaded Julia.
Creating an alias in your terminal config file (e.g..basrc or .zshrc)
for linux-type system (with Julia unpacked to /opt/julia/):
alias julia='/opt/julia/julia-1.X.Y/bin/julia'for MacOs (with Julia.app in Applications folder):
alias julia='/Applications/Julia-1.X.app/Contents/Resources/julia/bin/julia'Using juliaup- this is done automatically when installing with this tool.
All possible options are aggregated in this github repository. Some of them are breifly explained below.
If you just want to explore the language, you could start Julia in the terminal and use its REPL(read-eval-print loop). It is similar to tools like Ipython for Python or R terminal for R language.
If you are looking for IDE, the most popular option for coding now is the VSCode with the Julia extension.
If you want to install the VSCode on Linux machine from the terminal, I have a blog about explaining how to do it (TODO- write the post for that).
With a few plugins, it is possible to do Julia code development in vim or neovim. Below there will be a list of minimal configs allowing it.
Used to be the most popular option, now its best days are gone and it will not be receiving new updates (included here for completeness). You can explore more under this link.
%%–-
Links & References:
Context:
Status:
References: