I really like Julia a lot and actually used it in a work project a few years back.
However, there's the debugger issue. There are several debugger alternatives. It's tough to figure out which debugger is canonical (or is any of them the canonical debugger?). The one that seems to being used most at this point is Debugger.jl. However, it's exceedingly slow if you're debugging sizeable operations (matrix multiplies, for example) - I'm talking hitting 'n' to step to the next line and then waiting several minutes for it to get there. There's also Rebugger.jl, MagneticReadHead.jl (IIRC) and Infiltrator.jl among others. I finally found that Infiltrator.jl was a lot faster for that machine learning program I was trying to debug, but it's rather limited in features (the only way to set breakpoints it seems is by editing your source, for example).
And this isn't the only case where there are multiple packages for achieving some task and you're not quite sure which one is the one that's the most usable. I think what the Julia community needs to do is maybe add some kind of rating system for packages so you can see which packages have the highest rating.
I wrote 2 of them.
MagneticReadHead.jl
and MixedModeDebugger.jl
MagneticReadhead is interesting as it is a purely compiled debugger via extensive source code transfroms.
Same magic that powers Zygote.jl for AutoDiff.
Also same general concept as is behind Jax.
It has huge compile time overhead, so is not practically usable.
In that way it is the opposite of Debugger.jl, rather than being slow at runtime it is very slow at JIT compiling.
MixedModeDebugger.jl is a proof of concept.
A small Source Code Transform to allow the debugger to run entirely compiled until it is going to do something, then it swaps to interpreted just like Debugger.jl
Early benchmarks are extremely promising.
But it's not really hardened enough for use.
1. Debugger.jl is A LOT smoother if you run it in compiled mode, which is a checkbox in the Juno interface. I've found that stepping to next line is instant in compiled mode, but takes forever without it.
2. Infiltrator.jl is great at what it's designed for, which is to dump you in a REPL deep within a call stack and let you see what's going on. But, Debugger in compiled mode also does this well.
> 1. Debugger.jl is A LOT smoother if you run it in compiled mode, which is a checkbox in the Juno interface. I've found that stepping to next line is instant in compiled mode, but takes forever without it.
Is there a way to do this if I'm not running Juno? I'd guess there must be some parameter that can be passed to @enter or @run?
It means that if you would have hit a breakpoint in code that is run in compiled mode, the breakpoint doesn't trigger—because it's being run normally at full speed without breakpoints, not being interpreted in the debugger (which knows about breakpoints).
I read this as in compiled mode breakpoints don't trigger at all. Is that correct?
Edit: Ok, I tried out compiled mode and it does stop at my breakpoint. The verbage in the documentation is a bit difficult to understand on this point. I'd guess you need to first set your breakpoints prior to going into compile mode?
However, there's the debugger issue. There are several debugger alternatives. It's tough to figure out which debugger is canonical (or is any of them the canonical debugger?). The one that seems to being used most at this point is Debugger.jl. However, it's exceedingly slow if you're debugging sizeable operations (matrix multiplies, for example) - I'm talking hitting 'n' to step to the next line and then waiting several minutes for it to get there. There's also Rebugger.jl, MagneticReadHead.jl (IIRC) and Infiltrator.jl among others. I finally found that Infiltrator.jl was a lot faster for that machine learning program I was trying to debug, but it's rather limited in features (the only way to set breakpoints it seems is by editing your source, for example).
And this isn't the only case where there are multiple packages for achieving some task and you're not quite sure which one is the one that's the most usable. I think what the Julia community needs to do is maybe add some kind of rating system for packages so you can see which packages have the highest rating.