For end-users, could JuliaHub provide links to similar packages whenever someone is reading a specific package page? Or maybe a feature where members could suggest links manually for review? For example: If, as an end-user, I find InMemoryDatasets.jl in JuliaHub, I would like to be alerted that Da…

I think you could just teach students what are the github stars/forks, how to look at contributors’ page and commit history…

That is what I did. I don’t think it is enough though.

When you search JuliaHub for packages, the site already displays Github stars, version number, and the number of new users along with a graph (not sure how “new” is defined). So if you search for “CSV”, it’s pretty clear than JuliaData/CSV.jl is probably a choice to start with than tk3369/CSVReader.…

Yes, we need some way to make the redundancy explicit. Beginners tend to think that CSVReader.jl is a better choice just because of the name. Those coming from MATLAB tend to think that DLMReader.jl is a better choice just because of the name. These users should be aware that CSV.jl is the one most …

[image] juliohm: So links connecting all these packages would help […] One can easily cook an algorithm to cluster these packages based on their README The low-tech solution is just to start making PRs. I wish it was standard for every package’s Readme to have a section linking to other simil…

[image] juliohm: So links connecting all these packages would help, it is a community detection problem. We could bring telemetry back into discussion. [image] Pkg.jl telemetry should be opt-in Internals & Design New “ Pkg & Storage protocols ” and an accompanying cen…

[quote="juliohm, post:1, topic:82133] A student asked me yesterday “professor, how do I know if a Julia package is good?”. She had installed a package that was not well-maintained, was having issues with basic examples and didn’t know if that package was the go-to package to solve the problem (gues…

[image] alejandromerchan: So, while I agree that the proliferation of packages can be a problem, we can also solve it through education. I agree with everything you said, except for the statement above. I don’t think that we can improve the current duplication of efforts with education: the a…

IMHO that problem of “suggesting” packages and explain possible differences can be easily solved by good blog posts, written by developers or experienced users. As a community (in formal terms) I don’t think it would be good to have “official” tools for searching selected packages, that is against …

It is a good skill to learn. Don’t spoil your students. Let them grow by pushing them into bushes.

How to know if a package is good?

Community

oheil June 1, 2022, 4:53pm 7

We could bring telemetry back into discussion.

Topic		Replies	Views
How can we create a leaner ecosystem for Julia? Statistics package , proposal , time-series , machine-learning	100	11195	October 15, 2020
Julia losing popularity among Data Science users (KDnuggets Software Poll) Community	145	21259	June 23, 2018
Fixing Package Fragmentation Community	70	6610	May 28, 2023
What can we do to make Julia grow fast? Community	113	14181	November 16, 2018
The State of the Julia Ecosystem Community	108	9531	January 31, 2019

How to know if a package is good?

Related topics