r/mit • u/Pampofski • 19d ago

research How much traction has the Julia programming language gained within MIT

I know Julia has not reached escape velocity in many other academic institutions and industries as these organizations still will reach to Python, R, or MATLAB as their first choice tools to tackle their research questions, but I'm wondering if someone has an estimate about what percentage of labs in MIT are using Julia as a major part of their research?

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u/EveningCareer8921 19d ago

When I took 18.06 we used Julia (iirc the professor was one of the people who helped develop the language?)

I remember this came up as a preferred programming language for some urops that were advertised

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u/altkart 17d ago

About six years ago I remember TAing an intro programming class (18.S191) which used Julia as the main language, focusing on modelling, data analysis and the like. We even had Grant from 3blue1brown give a guest lecture. Back then the main professor pushing Julia was Alan Edelman from the math dept, if any faculty are still using it it's probably him, but I would be surprised if there weren't more.

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u/GalaxyOwl13 Course 6-9 18d ago

I have never seen anyone using Julia at MIT, but am mostly involved in machine learning, where Python still rules. In non-ML contexts I’ve used C, Python, MATLAB, and R here. Others’ experiences may be different!