# Julia as first language

**URL:** <https://discourse.julialang.org/t/julia-as-first-language/104383>\
**Category:** New to Julia\
**Created:** [September 29, 2023, 9:04am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/julia-as-first-language/104383 "2023-09-29T09:04:44Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 4

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**Author:** ![ShalokShalom](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/shalokshalom/32/52462_2.png) [@ShalokShalom](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/ShalokShalom)\
**Post date:** [September 29, 2023, 9:44am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/julia-as-first-language/104383/4 "2023-09-29T09:44:41Z")

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> [@DanielVandH](#):
>
> Is Rust so noob friendly? I would hate for that to be my first language, but maybe that’s only me.

It is the language itself, that prevents it from being suitable to be a first language.  
The culture, the people and the community as such, is very noob friendly.

> [@DanielVandH](#):
>
> It reads well and is straightforward to use

Mostly, yes. One part that really seems underdeveloped, is support for literate programming.  
So that we can use `not` instead of `!` and so on.

Literate programming is a great start to programming, since most of us are already literate.  
We already know how to use `and`, `or`, `not` and so on.

We don’t need to learn those, and code reads more natural to those, who are not used to random symbols, such as || and mathematical symbols.

I posted on other things in the past.

> [@Create concious compiler messages](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/create-concious-compiler-messages/104303):
>
> Hi +1:t3 As a newbie, one of the hardest parts of Julia for me yet, is clearly its error messages. frowning I find them often to be more confusing than helpful, and I am aware, that a part of this comes from the nature of Julia’s type system. Also, I think a substantial amount of disorder comes from the lack of conscious formatting, contextual information, and user guidance. I envision the error reporting to be more akin to Elm, Rust. And I am more than willing to contribute such consci…

And others have made great suggestions as well:

> [@OpinionatedJulia Package?](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/opinionatedjulia-package/103522/1):
>
> I’ve read a lot of opinions about what should be default for Julia to make it more accessible. Some conflicting but a lot of it is in alignment. Some of it is breaking to be in Base. Some of it is a matter of network/community issues (re: too many Chaining packages). Has anyone attempted to make an OpinionatedJulia.jl that installs things in the global env (Revise, Infiltrator…), adds nice things to startup.jl, has its own version of Pkg.generate()/PkgTemplates for fleshing out how the sensible…

Another aspect would be to care a bit about the VS Code Jupyter extension compatibility, as this serves as a great platform for tutorials.

And overall, I think it is more about the mindset, and the intention of the community.  
I am sure, all these things can improve, but I am not so sure, that the community actually desires Julia to be a language for new programmers.

With that mindset, the rest would come naturally, I assume.

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