Julia vs Scala | Popularity, Salary, Performance, Features, and Applications
Julia is a high-level, dynamic programming language that was designed for high performance.
It has many great features that make it well-suited for numerical analysis and computational science.
If you are interested in working on Data Visualization & Plotting, Data Science, Machine Learning, Parallel & Heterogeneous Computing, and Scientific Computing, you should learn Julia over Scala.
On the other hand, if you are interested in web development, big data processing, machine learning, text processing, and server-side programming, you should learn Scala over Julia.
Scala is a strong statically typed general-purpose programming language, it supports both object-oriented programming and functional programming.
Scala was designed to address most of the criticism of Java.
Comparing programming languages and choosing which one to learn can be tricky, there are many factors to consider in order to choose the right programming language for the job you want to do.
Popularity, opportunities, types of projects, salaries, resources, learning curve, etc. are some of the factors that many people consider when comparing programming languages and choosing which one to learn.
Here are some of the comparisons and considerations you should make when choosing to learn a new programming language.
JULIA VS SCALA POPULARITY
Comparing the popularity of programming languages is not an easy task because each programming language is different and they all seek to solve different problems.
Plus, other programming languages have been around for a longer time than others, giving them more time to be tried and tested, so, bear that in mind.
If you want to learn a programming language solely for its popularity among developers, you should learn Scala over Julia.
Generally, Scala is more popular than Julia. According to a Stack Overflow survey of 2023, Scala is the 27th most commonly used programming language, it is used by 2.77% of developers.
On the other hand, Julia is the 36th most commonly used programming language, it is used by 1.15% of developers according to the same survey.
It is worth noting that Julia is admired by a lot of developers than Scala. As of 2023, Julia is admired by 62.77% of developers while Scala is admired by 52.27% of developers.
Ultimately, if your choice of which programming language to learn depends on popularity, you should learn Scala over Julia.
What are the Best ways to learn Julia? Find out
JULIA VS SCALA SALARY
Another popular criterion that many people use to compare programming languages and as an incentive to learn a new programming language is salary.
Salaries for developers differ from one company to the other and from one country to the other.
Experience is another factor that comes into play as far as salaries are concerned.
The more experience you have with a certain technology or programming language, the more likely you are of getting a higher salary.
Generally, Scala developers get higher salaries than Julia developers. Scala is among some of the highly-paid programming languages.
According to a Stack Overflow survey of top-paying programming languages, Scala developers get a median salary of $96,381 per year.
On the other hand, Julia developers get a median salary of $74,963 per year about $21,400 less than Scala developers.
So, if the salary is your major incentive for learning a language, you should learn Scala over Julia, because you are more likely to get a higher salary as a Scala developer than as a Julia developer.
Here are 10 Programming Languages that Pay more than $90,000
JULIA OR SCALA WHICH ONE IS EASIER
Both Julia and Scala are easy languages to work with, they both have easy to understand syntax that is also simple to write.
Julia is generally considered to be easier to learn than Scala. This is because Julia has a simpler syntax and fewer keywords than Scala.
If you are coming from a numerical and statistical background, you may find Julia easy and attractive.
Scala’s syntax might have a steeper learning curve due to its combination of object-oriented and functional concepts.
Scala’s functional programming features might be challenging for newcomers to functional programming.
However, if you’re already familiar with functional programming concepts, you might find Scala appealing.
The good news is that there are plenty of helpful resources for both Scala and Julia to help you learn the languages.
The Scala and Julia communities are very active and helpful, in case you get stuck with something.
JULIA VS SCALA PERFORMANCE
When it comes to performance comparison, Julia has advantages over Scala, especially in scientific computing, machine learning, and statistics applications.
Julia is one of the few high-level programming languages in which petaFLOPS computations have been achieved, others being C, C++, and Fortran.
Julia is specifically designed for high-performance scientific and numerical computing. It uses a just-in-time (JIT) compilation approach that can lead to very efficient code execution.
Julia excels in scenarios where numerical computations, mathematical simulations, and data processing are involved.
It’s known for its ability to match or even outperform low-level languages like C and Fortran in many numerical tasks.
JULIA VS SCALA FEATURES AND APPLICATIONS
JULIA
Julia has many advanced features and libraries that make it a popular choice for Data Science, Machine Learning, Scientific Computing, Parallel Computing, and Data Visualization & Plotting.
Julia provides asynchronous I/O, metaprogramming, debugging, logging, profiling, a package manager, and more.
This makes it possible to build entire applications and Microservices in Julia.
It has a built-in package manager called Pkg that handles operations such as installing, updating, and removing packages.
Julia also uses multiple dispatch as a paradigm, making it easy to express many object-oriented and functional programming patterns.
The beauty of Julia is that you call C programming language functions directly without wrappers or special APIs.
It also has foreign function interfaces that make it work well with other programming languages such as Python, R, C++, Java, and many others.
Python and R packages such as PyJulia and JuliaCall can be used to call Julia packages in a Python or R codebase.
Julia is used by many companies such as Aviva, NASA, Brazilian INPE, Moderna, BlackRock, Climate Modelling Alliance, Google, Microsoft, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and many others.
SCALA
Scala provides language interoperability with Java, meaning that libraries written in Java can be called or referenced directly in Scala code and libraries written in Scala can be referenced in Java.
This provides a lot of advantages and features for both Scala and Java developers.
Scala’s standard library includes support for futures and promises for asynchronous programming.
Scala also comes with built-in support for data-parallel operations on collections to improve performance.
Actors can also be used for concurrency and distribution.
There are many popular companies using Scala, some of them include Twitter, Wix, Viber, Decathlon.fr, Coursera, Linkedin, Duolingo, Apple, The Guardian, and many others.
SHOULD I LEARN JULIA OR SCALA
Once you have compared the languages and evaluated all the factors, you can choose which programming language to learn depending on the factors that are on your side and what you want to build.
If you want a fast and high-performance language that you can use for Data Visualization & Plotting, Data Science, Machine Learning, Parallel & Heterogeneous Computing, and Scientific Computing, you should learn Julia over Scala.
If you want a popular, high-paying language that you can use for web development, big data processing, machine learning, text processing, and server-side programming, you should learn Scala over Julia