I will be speaking about Julia at the Stanford EE Computer Systems Colloquium on Wednesday, February 29 at 4:15PM PST.

The title of the talk is Julia: A Fast Dynamic Language For Technical Computing.

Abstract:

Julia is a general-purpose, high-level, dynamic language, designed from the start to take advantage of techniques for executing dynamic languages at statically-compiled language speeds. As a result the language has a more powerful type system, and generally provides better type information to the compiler. Julia is especially good at running MATLAB and R-style programs. Given its level of performance, we envision a new era of technical computing where libraries can be developed in a high-level language instead of C or FORTRAN. We have also experimented with cloud API integration, and begun to develop a web-based, language-neutral platform for visualization and collaboration. The ultimate goal is to make cloud-based supercomputing as easy and accessible as Google Docs.

Speaker Bio:

Jeff Bezanson has been developing the Julia language for two and a half years with a small distributed team of collaborators. Previously, he worked as a software engineer at Interactive Supercomputing, which developed the Star-P parallel extension to MATLAB. At the company, Jeff was a principal developer of "M#", an implementation of the MATLAB language running on .NET. He is now a second-year graduate student at MIT. Jeff received an A.B. in Computer Science from Harvard University in 2004, and has experience with applications of technical computing in medical imaging.

The talk will be webcast live.

Edit: the video of the talk can be found here.