Programming with Julia interpreter

Is it possible to provide a switch in Atom to allow the user to choose between code development with the Julia compiler and the interpreter? My conjecture is that there is a tradeoff between compile times and run-times, and that for many projects initial code development would be faster with the interpreter.

1 Like

There is no julia interpreter. You could probably write one, but JIT is julia’s secret weapon, it’s not going to be great without it.

Thank you very much for your quick response. I am probably out of my depth with issues like this and had forgotten that compilation implements a JIT strategy. I also take it from your response that the Julia interpreter is not standalone from the Julia debugger?

From what I’ve seen, that package is mostly used as a backend for debugging. I doubt there are any speed advantages to speak of.

Is there a JuliaInterpreter executable?

JuliaInterpreter.jl is certainly a Julia interpreter, and while it was originally written to help with debugging, it can be used to interpret your code without debugging purposes. It’ll likely be slow, but that’s besides the point.

There are some built-in interpretation capabilities as well, command line flags --compile=min will reduce the use of the compiler.

2 Likes

Apologies. I meant that there is no executable binary that gives you the kind of benefits op is looking for.

1 Like