My problem is that my current position does not allow me to do this development during working hours. As I have only very basic knowledge about programming (mainly from self-teaching), I assume that I will need about 10 times as much time as an experienced developer would need. I would be willing to invest a week of leisure time, because that is about as much as I can take away from my family (I have a baby that is currently going through one of those complicated phases, so I need to help my wife).
Accordingly, the question is, whether someone like me can do it within 10-15 hours work.
Considering the amount of time I would need to spend to actually learn what to do and where to get the code from and what to put into the package (not including testing it), and taking into account the time I could spare for it, I assume that an experienced developer might be able to get things finished within possibly 2 hours.
I still think that a package like this would be helpful to new users. The current situation (at least in my eyes) is like this:
- A putative new user is attracted to julia, possibly through an event like this or through the recent coverage in popular computer magazines.
- The new user downloads version 1.0.1, because this is the recommended version for new users (0.7 is recommended for developers and users with pre-existing code).
- The new user tries to run some examples available on the internet. Unfortunately, these frequently include pre-0.7 code like
linspaceor else. - The new user only gets error messages and nothing works.
- The new user is frustrated and turns away from julia.
- If bad comes to worse, he/she might even spread the word that julia is completely “useless”, because not even easy to find examples work.
All the discussions about deprecations that slow down code show that there is definitively a need for better communication of the deprecations (that’s why I suggested a synopsis). There are also other discussions where the need for better documentation for non-developers was mentioned. Julia has matured to version 1, so one can expect the user-base to shift a little bit towards inexperienced users. Currently, julia still demands a lot of enthusiasm from new users. If it stays like this the user-base will stay very small and all the really impressive work of the developers and this community was for a dead horse.
As @simonbyrne stated above it is now to late to get the deprecation warnings back into julia 1 core. I hope they keep them in the next major transition or supply better information.
The question remains: Can we remedy the current situation easily with either a package or a good documentation (if it is already out there, could somebody please post the link)?