Python Is So Slow. Can Julia Solve the Two-Language Problem?

As a genre, the “award acceptance lecture” is small much than a formality and a banality. But determination is astatine slightest 1 charming objection to this rule—the talks fixed by the foremost machine scientists connected the juncture of their Turing Awards.

Some work similar manifestos: John Backus’ “Can Programming Be Liberated From the von Neumann Style?” (1977) inspired a caller paradigm that begat functional languages similar Haskell. Others are warnings: In his “Reflections connected Trusting Trust” (1984), Ken Thompson demonstrated the peril of backdoored compilers, apt preventing scads of information vulnerabilities. Edsger Dijkstra, successful “The Humble Programmer” (1972), urged his ilk to beryllium wary of cleverness and admit “the intrinsic limitations of the quality mind.”

For our purposes, see Kenneth Iverson’s heady 1979 lecture, “Notation arsenic a Tool of Thought.” In it, helium demonstrated that mathematical notations aren’t conscionable convenient shorthand—CO₂ for c dioxide, 3,888 for MMMDCCCLXXXVIII—they besides marque caller insights readily discoverable. As the mathematician Alfred North Whitehead erstwhile enactment it: “By relieving the encephalon of each unnecessary work, a bully notation sets it escaped to ore connected much precocious problems.”

Iverson won his Turing Award for APL, a spooky-looking programming connection that began its beingness arsenic a strategy of notation for bridging betwixt languages. In the aboriginal days of technological computing, programmers had to deliberation successful 1 connection (mathematical notation) but past programme successful different (e.g., Fortran). APL was designed truthful that unwieldy operations could beryllium written arsenic compactly arsenic equations—lines of codification collapsed into a mates of symbols similar + oregon ×. APL turned retired to beryllium much influential than adopted, but nary matter: It showed that 2 languages could beryllium fused into one.

The twelvemonth 2026 marks 60 years since the instauration of APL, and a caller benignant of two-language occupation bedevils the tract of technological computing. The ruling programming connection is Python, but it reigns not arsenic a muscular conqueror truthful overmuch arsenic a doddering king. Python, successful different words, is terribly slow—a flaw that adjacent its astir ardent defenders would not deny.

Hence the two-language problem: Researchers prototype successful slow, affable Python but, for performance-critical parts, rewrite successful faster, little affable languages similar C++ oregon Rust. This regulation can’t beryllium solved by spinning up a platoon of AI coding agents, due to the fact that nary substance however overmuch you optimize a dilatory language, a faster 1 volition outperform it.

These binary trade-offs beryllium successful different domains. You could accidental that construction, for instance, has a two-material problem. Wood is simply a pliable worldly for prototyping a structure—even an amateur tin saw and nail unneurotic a functional building. But it’s nary bully for erecting a skyscraper. This raises an evident question: What if determination were a worldly arsenic manipulable arsenic wood but arsenic beardown arsenic steel? What if determination were a connection arsenic ergonomic arsenic Python but arsenic accelerated arsenic C?

In 2012, four machine scientists with beardown mathematical bona fides came unneurotic to code the modern-day two-language problem. In a abbreviated effort called “Why We Created Julia,” they said they took up the task “because we are greedy.” Their substance begins similar a valentine to programming languages:

We are powerfulness Matlab users. Some of america are Lisp hackers. Some are Pythonistas, others Rubyists, inactive others Perl hackers … We’ve generated much R plots than immoderate sane idiosyncratic should. C is our godforsaken land programming language.

But each 1 of these languages, they wrote, “is cleanable for immoderate aspects of the enactment and unspeakable for others.” Greedy arsenic they were, they wanted “a connection that’s unfastened source, with a wide licence … Something that is ungraded elemental to learn, yet keeps the astir superior hackers happy.” Julia would beryllium the 1 connection to unite them all.