Learning Julia: Introduction to Types

What you’ll learn—and how you can apply it

Julia's type system is one of its key features, and enables both flexible programming and fast performance. But, what is a type and how can it optimize your code?

In this lesson, we'll introduce types in Julia, and discuss how to use them effectively in your code. We'll explore Julia’s built-in types as well as show you how to define your own, including defining custom constructor methods. We'll also help you get a feel for various design decisions you'll face, such as when to use mutable vs. immutable types.

This lesson is for you because

You are a relatively new Julia developer looking for a firm foundation in Julia's type system. You want to write code that is high-performance without sacrificing maintainability.

Prerequisites:

• None

Materials or downloads needed:

• Julia 0.6

About the instructors

Spencer Russell is a researcher and PhD candidate at the MIT Media Lab, where his work has ranged from wireless mesh networks and sensor infrastructure to audio spatialization and