Is PyCall still the go-to approach for most people or are there newer
I would say no, PythonCall.jl is now typo not the mainstream, and the future. PyCall is still used by some python package wrappers, so you might end up using both at the same time even without knowing it. See the docs on if such is still a problem.
Packages like:
https://github.com/SciML/diffeqpy
previously used PyCall.jl but switched to PythonCall.jl (on my recommendation).
You need to decide which is your main language to call from, if Python, you install the associated juliacall Python package and do something like:
from juliacall import Main as jl
That way you can e.g. use Django, or whatever Python uses for GUIs, even for SQL (Julia have GUI, maybe less developed, web and SQL capabilities too if you want Julia the main language) and call Julia for some stuff.
Note there similar for Ruby [on Rails]:
gem install jl4rb
I don’t know how good it is, or if in-process, as the other solutions for python, or if calling in both directions is then possible. I knew of this years ago, but rarely see Ruby discussed for interop with Julia if ever. It might still just work.
One thing of note, is that Python dicts, are by now ordered (what I and them consider convenient), Julia’s built-in Dict isn’t ordered (to be faster or not rule out such algorithms). Ordered is available in OrderedCollections.jl, and I’ve tried to get it to be the new default in Julia…
Anything you build in pure Python will be way slower (NumPy, numba etc. compensate, but not fully).
What do you have in mind, can you even provide a link to it?
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