Basic introduction to Julia

Course Overview

Julia is a powerful new language for numerical computing that combines high performance with high-level syntax, attaining comparable speeds as C yet remaining accessible to programming initiates. This workshop will provide a basic introduction to efficient programming in Julia (i.e., type stability, performance tips and parallel computing). The workshop will be hands-on, so the attendees will interact with Julia through the REPL after setting a practical workflow to facilitate a first good experience. Overall, I will cover types and elementary functions, arrays, control flow, multiple dispatch, statistical tools, integrating with shell, R and Python, benchmarking, performance tips, parallel computing and meta-programming. While learning a new programming requires long periods of practice, the goals of this workshop are mainly to i) demonstrate the specifics and advantages of the language, ii) to provide a first guided experience that can equip the audience with the necessary tools to continue individually. It is intended for an audience with some programming background, particularly R (for important differences will be highlighted), and who are interested in developing models with orders of magnitude faster code. This workshop would require a projector for the instructor (me) and multiple power outlets for laptops as the audience interact with Julia first-hand.

Part of the Master course “Computational Biology”.

For more information go to Software.