SUsuavesito·Sep 9, 2023
About the show startup times, they have been worked massively in the latest version of Julia. Mainly in version 1.9, which is the first version of Julia that saves native compiled code. You can RAAF more about that in the released blog [1].
On garbage collection and real-time applications, there is this [2] talk where ASML (the manufacturer of photolithography machines for TSMC) uses Julia for it. Basically it preallocates all memory needed before hand and turns off the garbage collector.
On the same more about real-time, if your call stack is all type stable [3], the you can be sure that after the first call (and subsequent compilation), the JAOT compiler won't be triggered.
About static compilation, there are two different approaches
* PackageCompiler.jl [4], which is rally stable and used in production today. It has he downside of gen
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erating huge executables, but you can do work to trim them. There is still work to do on the size of them.
* StaticCompiler.jl [5], which is still in the experimental phase. But it is far from being completely brittle. It does puts several restrictions on the chide you can write and compile with it, basically turning Julia in a static type language. But it had been successfully used to compile linkable libraries and executables.
Some of the concerns you have about usability in your third paragraph have been worked on with the 1.9 and 1.10 (coming) releases. The LSP usage is better thanks to native code caching, maybe you can try it again (of you have time). The debugging experience I honestly think is top notch if you're using Debugger.jl+Revise.jl [6] [7], still I know there are some caveats in it. About stack traces, there is also a more of work done to make them better and more readable, you can read the with done in these PR's [8] [9] [10] [11, for state of Julia talk].
Still, I can understand that Julia might not be able (yet) to cover all the usecases or workflows of different people.
[1]: https://julialang.org/blog/2023/04/julia-1.9-highlights/#cac...
[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EafTuyy7apY
[3]: https://docs.julialang.org/en/v1/manual/performance-tips/#Wr...
[4]: https://julialang.github.io/PackageCompiler.jl
[5]: https://github.com/tshort/StaticCompiler.jl
[6]: https://github.com/JuliaDebug/Debugger.jl
[7]: https://timholy.github.io/Revise.jl/stable/
[8]: https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia/pull/49117
[9]: https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia/pull/49959
[10]: https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia/pull/45069
[11]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2D8oRtDJEeg&t=2487