# Beyond technical computing and powering static site generators, what has Julia been used for?

**URL:** <https://discourse.julialang.org/t/beyond-technical-computing-and-powering-static-site-generators-what-has-julia-been-used-for/41299>\
**Category:** Community\
**Tags:** question\
**Created:** [June 12, 2020, 8:32pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/beyond-technical-computing-and-powering-static-site-generators-what-has-julia-been-used-for/41299 "2020-06-12T20:32:26Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 20\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![fusion809](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/fusion809/32/6080_2.png) [@fusion809](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/fusion809)\
**Post date:** [June 12, 2020, 8:32pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/beyond-technical-computing-and-powering-static-site-generators-what-has-julia-been-used-for/41299/1 "2020-06-12T20:32:26Z")

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I was just curious as to what use Julia has found so far outside of technical computing and powering static site generators. After all, it’s a general-purpose programming language, so I’d imagine it would have found use in all sorts of weird and wonderful places.

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**Author:** ![rdeits](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/rdeits/32/286_2.png) [@rdeits](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/rdeits)\
**Post date:** [June 12, 2020, 8:47pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/beyond-technical-computing-and-powering-static-site-generators-what-has-julia-been-used-for/41299/2 "2020-06-12T20:47:11Z")

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I’ve done lots of puzzle-related work in Julia, mostly for the [MIT Mystery Hunt](https://www.mit.edu/~puzzle/). Not all of it is online (there are a lot of one-off scripts or notebooks), but a few things have been promoted to actual project status:

- [GitHub - rdeits/CrypticCrosswords.jl: Cryptic crossword clue solver written in Julia](https://github.com/rdeits/CrypticCrosswords.jl) (cryptic crossword clue solver)
- [https://github.com/rdeits/Collective.jl](https://github.com/rdeits/Collective.jl) (automatic identification of interesting features in groups of words)
- The 2018 puzzle [33 RPM](http://web.mit.edu/puzzle/www/2018/full/puzzle/33_rpm.html) and its sequel [Mix Tape](http://web.mit.edu/puzzle/www/2018/full/puzzle/mix_tape.html) were both constructed in Julia, as was the [All Spark](http://web.mit.edu/puzzle/www/2018/full/puzzle/allspark.html) metapuzzle.

I’ve also done a few other things semi-recently:

- Oscilloscope music decoder: [Oscilloscope Music ←](http://blog.robindeits.com/2020/06/07/oscilloscope-music/)
- Trivia game: [https://github.com/rdeits/Trivia.jl](https://github.com/rdeits/Trivia.jl)

And I’m working on replicating the beautiful data visualizations from [https://www.instagram.com/theozonelab/](https://www.instagram.com/theozonelab/) in Julia–I’ll release the code on github just as soon as I get around to it…

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**Author:** ![cormullion](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/cormullion/32/49131_2.png) [@cormullion](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/cormullion)\
**Post date:** [June 12, 2020, 8:53pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/beyond-technical-computing-and-powering-static-site-generators-what-has-julia-been-used-for/41299/3 "2020-06-12T20:53:52Z")

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I do odd rather than weird things…

[![](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/original/3X/8/8/887923e1d1f79c451d59702bd73b984da6d908b3.jpeg "Painting boxes") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FA2FgJU6dM)

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**Author:** ![rdeits](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/rdeits/32/286_2.png) [@rdeits](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/rdeits)\
**Post date:** [June 12, 2020, 9:02pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/beyond-technical-computing-and-powering-static-site-generators-what-has-julia-been-used-for/41299/4 "2020-06-12T21:02:06Z")

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Cool! Are you splitting each cell when the stddev of the pixel values within the cell is above some decreasing threshold?

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**Author:** ![cormullion](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/cormullion/32/49131_2.png) [@cormullion](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/cormullion)\
**Post date:** [June 12, 2020, 9:06pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/beyond-technical-computing-and-powering-static-site-generators-what-has-julia-been-used-for/41299/5 "2020-06-12T21:06:18Z")

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something like that - but it was three years ago now 😀

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**Author:** ![Palli](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/palli/32/3380_2.png) [@Palli](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Palli)\
**Post date:** [June 12, 2020, 11:13pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/beyond-technical-computing-and-powering-static-site-generators-what-has-julia-been-used-for/41299/6 "2020-06-12T23:13:48Z")

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It’s not only used for technical computing, it’s also used for quantum computers and for quantum annealers. 🙂

Jokes aside, it’s not just Franklin.jl, i.e. static sites, but also dynamic web sites can be done with or without JavaScript, e.g. at work I’m using [GitHub - plotly/Dash.jl: Dash for Julia - A Julia interface to the Dash ecosystem for creating analytic web applications in Julia. No JavaScript required.](https://github.com/plotly/Dash.jl) we’ll see how technical our computing will get. So far, I would say rather down to earth (with Julia, not otherwise with other languages we use, including in-house built one).

The case studies are interesting:

> **[Modeling and Simulation - Case Studies | JuliaHub](https://juliahub.com/case-studies/)**
>
> Julia Computing helps companies leverage Julia for machine learning to achieve precision modeling and simulation controls. Check out our case studies.

My favorite is humanoid robots (yes, research, only simulation, still real-time), but “[High school math teacher uses Julia to solve Silicon Valley cryptography stumper](https://juliacomputing.com/case-studies/adobe-cryptography-challenge.html)” [“was unsolved for nearly five years”] also interesting.

There “[Voxel8 is using Julia for 3D printing](https://juliacomputing.com/case-studies/voxel8.html)” is interesting, as the first company to use Julia (that I know of), while you could call it technical? And space planning, and FAA work etc. I had missed out on the drone delivery company/case study:

> [Zipline’s](https://flyzipline.com/) mission is to ‘provide every human on Earth with instant access to vital medical supplies’ – including blood, plasma and medicine. […]
> 
> They’ve done it more than 30,000 times already.

That one is maybe pure “software” (not technical in some sense, while I see “unsupervised machine learning” used?):

> [Zebrium](https://www.zebrium.com/) is a software company that has built the industry’s first Dev/Test Forensics platform. The Zebrium platform helps to automatically detect, triage and speed-up the resolution of failures that occur during the Dev/Test cycle. This can shorten CI/CD cycles

“quantitative finance library QuantLib” (a port, not a wrapper), see some of the finance companies using Julia in the case studies (including very big ones, Blackrock, not sure which uses this (or other related Julia) library/ies):

[Welcome to QuantLib.jl’s documentation! — QuantLib.jl 0.0.1 documentation](https://quantlibjl.readthedocs.io/en/latest/) (e.g. “[Calculate the Survival Probability of a Credit Default Swap](https://quantlibjl.readthedocs.io/en/latest/getting_started.html#calculate-the-survival-probability-of-a-credit-default-swap)”)

[GitHub - lanl/Origami.jl: Nonnegative/binary matrix factorization with a D-Wave quantum annealer](https://github.com/lanl/Origami.jl) “with a D-Wave quantum annealer”

> This package is part of the Hybrid Quantum-Classical Computing suite

FYI: There are quantum computers (still not practical), and I’m not sure Julia has run on them (only simulating them/quantum computation, with state-of-the art Julia libraries) and quantum annealers are a different kind, and I understand they provide a useful speedup for companies to invest in their use, and I just found Julia libraries for such, while those where made by Triad National Security for the US government, anyone can use, as the license is a “BSD-ish license” [GitHub - lanl/ThreeQ.jl: Julia interface to D-Wave quantum annealing hardware](https://github.com/lanl/ThreeQ.jl) 🙂

> **[kqis-7-piotr-gawron-13-03-2019.pdf](https://www.informatyka.agh.edu.pl/media/uploads/kqis-7-piotr-gawron-13-03-2019.pdf)**
>
> 1286.14 KB

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**Author:** ![non-Jedi](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/non-jedi/32/3645_2.png) [@non-Jedi](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/non-Jedi)\
**Post date:** [June 13, 2020, 12:17am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/beyond-technical-computing-and-powering-static-site-generators-what-has-julia-been-used-for/41299/7 "2020-06-13T00:17:02Z")

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Probably the most unique application I’ve seen is the [Ahorn level editor for the Celeste videogame](https://github.com/CelestialCartographers/Ahorn). It’s written in rather messy and definitely unidiomatic Julia but Julia nonetheless.

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**Author:** ![tbeason](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/tbeason/32/15898_2.png) [@tbeason](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/tbeason)\
**Post date:** [June 13, 2020, 2:58am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/beyond-technical-computing-and-powering-static-site-generators-what-has-julia-been-used-for/41299/8 "2020-06-13T02:58:15Z")

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Well once you throw away the fun stuff, what more did you expect us to do with Julia?

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**Author:** ![djsegal](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/djsegal/32/13752_2.png) [@djsegal](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/djsegal)\
**Post date:** [June 13, 2020, 5:11am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/beyond-technical-computing-and-powering-static-site-generators-what-has-julia-been-used-for/41299/9 "2020-06-13T05:11:44Z")

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@fusion809, going to raise your question with another question.

Besides technical computing (which includes ML) and websites (which includes Django), what has Python been used for?

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**Author:** ![fusion809](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/fusion809/32/6080_2.png) [@fusion809](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/fusion809)\
**Post date:** [June 13, 2020, 5:19am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/beyond-technical-computing-and-powering-static-site-generators-what-has-julia-been-used-for/41299/10 "2020-06-13T05:19:06Z")

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I’ll let this Wikipedia article answer your question [List of Python software - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Python_software).

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**Author:** ![djsegal](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/djsegal/32/13752_2.png) [@djsegal](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/djsegal)\
**Post date:** [June 13, 2020, 5:29am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/beyond-technical-computing-and-powering-static-site-generators-what-has-julia-been-used-for/41299/11 "2020-06-13T05:29:32Z")

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> [@fusion809](#):
>
> I’ll let this Wikipedia article answer your question [List of Python software - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Python_software)

Alright so,

- Julia has a bunch of IDE’s (Juno, JuliaPro, or w/e the kids are using)
- Testing frameworks – Julia has tests (although I wish you had some more choices)
- Package managers seems like PyPi where Pkg.jl is the obvious replacement
- Applications seems extremely vague. Who here doesn’t make applications?
- Web Apps/Frameworks (already discussed, although you focused on the static sites)
- Video Games. We have those ([Tetris](https://github.com/djsegal/Tetris.jl) included)
- Graphics - we have plots and I think people do some 3d stuff too
- UIFrameworks - this is like Interact.jl? just gui development?
- Science/Mathematical/Numerical packages – these are all covered by _technical_ computing

I guess I don’t know really how to answer it? Yes there are fewer packages, but it seems like all the parties are represented?

* * *

**edit:** also a good list of packages divided by type is [svaksha’s decibans](https://github.com/svaksha/Julia.jl#index)

// or [juliapackages.com](http://juliapackages.com) when its back online

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**Author:** ![Skoffer](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/skoffer/32/378_2.png) [@Skoffer](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Skoffer)\
**Post date:** [June 13, 2020, 6:50am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/beyond-technical-computing-and-powering-static-site-generators-what-has-julia-been-used-for/41299/12 "2020-06-13T06:50:14Z")

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Recently I wrote small Julia script, which accept incoming emails, extract necessary information and send it to the telegram. It just happens that I check telegram more frequently than mailbox, so it is convenient.

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**Author:** ![essenciary](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/essenciary/32/210469_2.png) [@essenciary](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/essenciary)\
**Post date:** [June 16, 2020, 11:07am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/beyond-technical-computing-and-powering-static-site-generators-what-has-julia-been-used-for/41299/13 "2020-06-16T11:07:04Z")

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Who has time and interest to start an Awesome Julia repo? 🕶

> **[Awesome Search](https://awesomelists.top/)**
>
> Awesome Search - makes you find what you want in awesome lists more quickly.

* * *

Update 1:  
Ah, there is one!

> **[GitHub - svaksha/Julia.jl: Curated decibans of Julia programming language.](https://github.com/svaksha/Julia.jl)**
>
> Curated decibans of Julia programming language. Contribute to svaksha/Julia.jl development by creating an account on GitHub.

I guess more info about applications and products would help, the focus is mostly on packages.

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**Author:** ![tbeason](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/tbeason/32/15898_2.png) [@tbeason](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/tbeason)\
**Post date:** [June 16, 2020, 2:31pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/beyond-technical-computing-and-powering-static-site-generators-what-has-julia-been-used-for/41299/14 "2020-06-16T14:31:32Z")

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I’ve started to use a combination of Julia packages to download remote datasets, extract only the stuff that I want, and save it in the format I prefer. I will probably make this into a cronjob so that it basically becomes a custom local mirror of several different data sources.

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**Author:** ![Skoffer](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/skoffer/32/378_2.png) [@Skoffer](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Skoffer)\
**Post date:** [June 16, 2020, 3:52pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/beyond-technical-computing-and-powering-static-site-generators-what-has-julia-been-used-for/41299/15 "2020-06-16T15:52:47Z")

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Julian version of airflow can be awesome… I guess we need second Airbnb for that, though 🙂

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**Author:** ![xiaodai](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/xiaodai/32/15937_2.png) [@xiaodai](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/xiaodai)\
**Post date:** [June 17, 2020, 9:36am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/beyond-technical-computing-and-powering-static-site-generators-what-has-julia-been-used-for/41299/16 "2020-06-17T09:36:45Z")

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> [@tbeason](#):
>
> I’ve started to use a combination of Julia packages to download remote datasets, extract only the stuff that I want, and save it in the format I prefer.

r u using DataDeps.jl?

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**Author:** ![nilshg](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/nilshg/32/2283_2.png) [@nilshg](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/nilshg)\
**Post date:** [June 17, 2020, 10:08am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/beyond-technical-computing-and-powering-static-site-generators-what-has-julia-been-used-for/41299/17 "2020-06-17T10:08:46Z")

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[![]( " - YouTube") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7tvauOJMHo)

EDIT to add: I’m fully aware that the intention of the thread was well-meaning and not an attempt to imply that Julia’s applicability is not broad enough, but the title was too tempting not to post this!

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**Author:** ![xiaodai](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/xiaodai/32/15937_2.png) [@xiaodai](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/xiaodai)\
**Post date:** [June 17, 2020, 10:16am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/beyond-technical-computing-and-powering-static-site-generators-what-has-julia-been-used-for/41299/18 "2020-06-17T10:16:51Z")

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> [@nilshg](#):
>
> but the title was too tempting not to post this!

I fail to see the connection actually…

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**Author:** ![tbeason](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/tbeason/32/15898_2.png) [@tbeason](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/tbeason)\
**Post date:** [June 17, 2020, 10:24am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/beyond-technical-computing-and-powering-static-site-generators-what-has-julia-been-used-for/41299/19 "2020-06-17T10:24:21Z")

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No. RemoteFiles.jl actually does a lot of the work.

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**Author:** ![Tamas\_Papp](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/tamas_papp/32/25949_2.png) [@Tamas\_Papp](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Tamas_Papp)\
**Post date:** [June 17, 2020, 11:31am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/beyond-technical-computing-and-powering-static-site-generators-what-has-julia-been-used-for/41299/20 "2020-06-17T11:31:10Z")

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> [@nilshg](#):
>
> but the title was too tempting not to post this!

This is the first thing that occurred to me too reading the title, but I managed to resist the templation 😉

Incidentally, I find the title of the post a bit curious — technical computing is a very broad, and static site generators like the excellent [Franklin.jl](https://github.com/tlienart/Franklin.jl) is a single, very narrow (but useful) application for Julia. There are countless examples of the latter, ranging from simple scripts (Julia may not be the ideal choice, but familiarity is handy) to doing cool things with a Raspberry Pi, so it puzzles me why this was singled out.