Overview
R, Stata and Python offer great functionality that is sufficient for most uses. But of course they are not the only languages available. In this section, we summarize several alternatives that are also commonly used by researchers and data scientists, starting with Julia.
Julia
Julia is a high-performance, just-in-time compiled programming language. It is a fairly new competitor to R, MATLAB and Python, and focuses on delivering performance that is close to statically compiled languages (e.g. C++), while keeping the benefits of a high-level programming language. One of the main benefits of Julia is that it offers efficient computation of loops, which is where its competitors usually provide slow execution times.
Julia is open-source and can be downloaded here: Julia Download | Installation Instructions