Julia — The Complete Guide: A Fast Scientific Computing Language for Engineers, Free
Julia is an open-source programming language designed from the start for scientific and engineering computing. It solves the “two-language problem”: instead of prototyping in MATLAB or Python and then rewriting in C or Fortran for speed, you write once — and the code compiles and runs fast.
Julia
JuliaLang
A programming language for fast scientific computing — as easy to write as Python, close to C in speed.
Get it from the vendorWhy engineers choose it
- Speed — loops run fast without having to vectorise the code, which matters in long simulations.
- Mathematical syntax — close to MATLAB, with indexing from 1 and Greek letters allowed in code.
- Mature libraries — DifferentialEquations.jl, JuMP for optimisation, ModelingToolkit for system modelling, Unitful for units, Plots and Makie for charts.
- Interoperability — call Python, C and Fortran code from Julia.
Getting started
Download Julia from the official site (the juliaup installer is recommended), open the REPL and install packages with ]add Plots. For comfortable work, use it in VSCodium with the Julia extension, or in JupyterLab — the “Ju” in Jupyter stands for Julia.
What to know
The first run of each function is slow because it is compiled on the spot; later runs are fast. The ecosystem is smaller than Python's and some libraries are young. For a short, simple calculation the speed difference is not noticeable.
When to choose Julia
When the computation is heavy — a long dynamic simulation, optimisation with many variables, a numerical solver you write yourself — Julia is worth the switch. For everyday data processing and automation, Python with its huge ecosystem remains the simple choice. For almost identical MATLAB syntax — GNU Octave.
Python
Python Software Foundation
The language behind most modern engineering computation, and its full ecosystem.
Get it from the vendor
JupyterLab
Project Jupyter
Interactive computing notebooks — code, results, plots and explanations in one shareable document.
Get it from the vendor
GNU Octave
GNU Project
Numerical computing in MATLAB-compatible syntax — matrices, equations, signals and plots.
Get it from the vendor
VSCodium
VSCodium project
The VS Code editor as a fully open build — Python, MATLAB, C, Markdown and more, without telemetry.
Get it from the vendorThe bottom line
Julia is the right tool when a calculation is too slow in MATLAB or Python. It is completely free, and the time spent learning it pays back in every simulation project.