Free Julia Workshop: From Installed to Productive

Leah Hanson will be hosting a free workshop in Chicago for anyone looking to learn more about the Julia language. Leah is an active member of the Julia community; some of you may know her from her JuliaCon talk (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40r-o0r-MEU) this past June.

WHAT WILL I LEARN

The goal of this workshop is to take you from having Julia installed to being able to fluently write small programs in it. The workshop will cover Julia basics: syntax, development workflow, features of the REPL, places to find documentation and assistance, some specific features (e.g. writing macros, running shell commands). Julia is mostly written in Julia, so some code examples will be sourced from the core Julia codebase.

Effective uses of multiple dispatch and the dynamic type system in program design will be highlighted throughout the workshop. These are two of Julia’s most unusual features, so designing programs around them requires thinking specifically in Julia, rather than translating another programming language into Julia’s syntax.

WHO SHOULD ATTEND

Software developers and anyone with an interest in learning the Julia language (http://www.julialang.org/).

PREREQUISITES

Attendees will be expected to have Julia already installed, as there will be frequent hands-on exercises. Becoming more fluent in the language requires that you write Julia code; the workshop will be filled with opportunities to do so.

REGISTRATION

Please sign up before November 12 if you wish to attend. For security purposes we need to give the venue a list of attendees three days before the workshop.

ABOUT JULIA

Julia is a high-level, high-performance dynamic language with first-class types, homoiconic macros, and multiple-dispatch. Development workflows center on the REPL; types are flexible, useful, and dynamic; syntax is clean and familiar. Julia feels as practical and easy to learn and use as Python; in fact, Julia is noticeably fun to write.