Programming Books

7 Excellent Free Books to Learn Julia

Last Updated on May 22, 2022

Julia is a high-level, high-performance dynamic programming language for technical computing by Alan Edelman, Stefan Karpinski, Jeff Bezanson, and Viral Shah. Julia aims to create an unprecedented combination of ease-of-use, power, and efficiency in a single language.

It’s a homoiconic functional language focused on technical computing. While having the full power of homoiconic macros, first-class functions, and low-level control, Julia is as easy to learn and use as Python.

Although Julia is a new language, first appearing in 2012, its roots are in Lisp, so it comes with mature features like macros and support for other metaprogramming techniques like code generation. Julia’s expressive grammar lets you write easy-to-read and easier-to-debug code, and its speed gets you through more work in less time. It’s a great choice whether you’re designing a machine learning system, crunching statistical data, or writing system utilities.

Distinctive aspects of Julia’s design include a type system with parametric polymorphism and types in a fully dynamic programming language and multiple dispatch as its core programming paradigm. It allows concurrent, parallel and distributed computing, and direct calling of C and Fortran libraries without glue code.

Because Julia is a new language there are relatively limited resources to help you get started with it besides the official documentation. But we’ve researched the finest open source resources to help you master the language.


1. Think Julia: How to Think Like a Computer Scientist by Allen Downey, Ben Lauwens

Think Julia: How to Think Like a Computer Scientist

Julia is a unique programming language because it solves the so-called “two languages problem.” No other programming language is needed to write high-performance code. This does not mean it happens automatically. It’s the responsibility of the programmer to optimize the code that forms a bottleneck, but this can done in Julia itself.

This book is for anyone who wants to learn to program. No formal prior knowledge is required.

New concepts are introduced gradually and more advanced topics are described in later chapters.

Think Julia can be used for a one-semester course at the high school or college level.

Think Julia is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.

Read the book


2. Julia Language: A Concise Tutorial by Antonello Lobianco

Julia LanguageThe purposes of this tutorial are (a) to store things the author has learned himself about Julia and (b) to help those who want to start coding in Julia before reading official documentation.

Chapters cover:

Language core:

  • Getting started.
  • Data types.
  • Control flow.
  • Functions.
  • Custom structures.
  • Input – Output.
  • Managing run-time errors (exceptions).
  • Interfacing Julia with other languages.
  • Metaprogramming.
  • Performances (parallelisation, debugging, profiling…).
  • Developing Julia packages.

Useful packages:

  • Plotting.
  • DataFrames.
  • JuMP.
  • SymPy.
  • Weave.
  • LAJuliaUtils.
  • IndexedTables.

License details are not specified.

Read the book


3. The Julia Express by Bogumił Kaminski

The Julia ExpressThe purpose of this document is to introduce programmers to Julia programming by example. This short book is a simplified exposition of the language.

This is an introductory document. Important topics that a person learning the Julia should be aware of, that are not covered are: parametric types, parallel and distributed processing, advanced I/O operations, advanced package management, interaction with system shell, exception handling, creation of coroutines, and integration with C, Fortran, Python and R.

Chapters cover:

  • Basic literals and types.
  • Special literals and types;
  • Strings.
  • Programming constructs.
  • Variable scoping
  • Modules.
  • Operators.
  • Essential general usage functions.
  • Reading and writing data.
  • Random numbers.
  • Statistics and machine learning
  • Macros.
  • Plotting

The Julia Express is published under the MIT License.

Read the book


Next page: Page 2 – The Julia Language and more books

Pages in this article:
Page 1 – Think Julia: How to Think Like a Computer Scientist and more books
Page 2 – The Julia Language and more books


All books in this series:

Free Programming Books
AdaALGOL-like programming language, extended from Pascal and other languages
AgdaDependently typed functional language based on intuitionistic Type Theory
ArduinoInexpensive, flexible, open source microcontroller platform
AssemblyAs close to writing machine code without writing in pure hexadecimal
AwkVersatile language designed for pattern scanning and processing language
BashShell and command language; popular both as a shell and a scripting language
BASICBeginner’s All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code
CGeneral-purpose, procedural, portable, high-level language
C++General-purpose, portable, free-form, multi-paradigm language
C#Combines the power and flexibility of C++ with the simplicity of Visual Basic
ClojureDialect of the Lisp programming language
ClojureScriptCompiler for Clojure that targets JavaScript
COBOLCommon Business-Oriented Language
CoffeeScriptTranscompiles into JavaScript inspired by Ruby, Python and Haskell
CoqDependently typed language similar to Agda, Idris, F* and others
CrystalGeneral-purpose, concurrent, multi-paradigm, object-oriented language
CSSCSS (Cascading Style Sheets) specifies a web page’s appearance
DGeneral-purpose systems programming language with a C-like syntax
DartClient-optimized language for fast apps on multiple platforms
DylanMulti-paradigm language supporting functional and object-oriented coding
ECMAScriptBest known as the language embedded in web browsers
EiffelObject-oriented language designed by Bertrand Meyer
ElixirRelatively new functional language running on the Erlang virtual machine
ErlangGeneral-purpose, concurrent, declarative, functional language
F#Uses functional, imperative, and object-oriented programming methods
FactorDynamic stack-based programming language
ForthImperative stack-based programming language
FortranThe first high-level language, using the first compiler
GoCompiled, statically typed programming language
GroovyPowerful, optionally typed and dynamic language
HaskellStandardized, general-purpose, polymorphically, statically typed language
HTMLHyperText Markup Language
IconWide variety of features for processing and presenting symbolic data
JArray programming language based primarily on APL
JavaGeneral-purpose, concurrent, class-based, object-oriented, high-level language
JavaScriptInterpreted, prototype-based, scripting language
JuliaHigh-level, high-performance language for technical computing
KotlinMore modern version of Java
LabVIEWDesigned to enable domain experts to build power systems quickly
LaTeXProfessional document preparation system and document markup language
LispUnique features - excellent to study programming constructs
LogoDialect of Lisp that features interactivity, modularity, extensibility
LuaDesigned as an embeddable scripting language
MarkdownPlain text formatting syntax designed to be easy-to-read and easy-to-write
Objective-CObject-oriented language that adds Smalltalk-style messaging to C
OCamlThe main implementation of the Caml language
PascalImperative and procedural language designed in the late 1960s
PerlHigh-level, general-purpose, interpreted, scripting, dynamic language
PHPPHP has been at the helm of the web for many years
PostScriptInterpreted, stack-based and Turing complete language
PrologA general purpose, declarative, logic programming language
PureScriptSmall strongly, statically typed language compiling to JavaScript
PythonGeneral-purpose, structured, powerful language
QMLHierarchical declarative language for user interface layout - JSON-like syntax
RDe facto standard among statisticians and data analysts
RacketGeneral-purpose, object-oriented, multi-paradigm, functional language
RakuMember of the Perl family of programming languages
RubyGeneral purpose, scripting, structured, flexible, fully object-oriented language
RustIdeal for systems, embedded, and other performance critical code
ScalaModern, object-functional, multi-paradigm, Java-based language
SchemeA general-purpose, functional language descended from Lisp and Algol
ScratchVisual programming language designed for 8-16 year-old children
SQLAccess and manipulate data held in a relational database management system
Standard MLGeneral-purpose functional language characterized as "Lisp with types"
SwiftPowerful and intuitive general-purpose programming language
TclDynamic language based on concepts of Lisp, C, and Unix shells
TeXMarkup and programming language - create professional quality typeset text
TypeScriptStrict syntactical superset of JavaScript adding optional static typing
ValaObject-oriented language, syntactically similar to C#
VHDLHardware description language used in electronic design automation
VimLPowerful scripting language of the Vim editor
XMLRules for defining semantic tags describing structure ad meaning
Subscribe
Notify of
guest

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

0 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments