632 – Julia for Modern Statistical Computing
Linguistic Relativity and Programming Languages
Jiahao Chen
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The use of programming languages can wax and wane across the decades. We examine the split- apply-combine pattern that is common in statistical computing, and consider how its invocation or implementation in languages like MATLAB and APL differ from R/dplyr. The differences in spelling illustrate how the concept of linguistic relativity applies to programming languages in ways that are analogous to human languages. Finally, we discuss how Julia, by being a high performance yet general purpose dynamic language, allows its users to express different abstractions to suit individual preferences.