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Best Courses Guides

9 Best Julia Courses for 2024: Modern Lang for Science

Stop prototyping in one language and optimizing in another. Embrace Julia, a speedy yet simple language for scientific computing, with these free and paid courses.


When it comes to scientific computing and data analysis, the languages that are most talked about are Python, R, and MATLAB. And all for good reasons: they are easy-to-use, well-documented, and have a large community.

Yet, there’s a fatal flaw with each of these languages:

  • Python: Great for prototyping, especially with third-party libraries. But if you want to overcome Python’s inherent slowness, you need to waste time rewriting everything again to a faster language like C (which is what Python machine learning libraries do).
  • R: Awesome for statistics and data analysis, but that’s it really. It’s terrible at handling heavy computations.
  • MATLAB: Excels at numerical computations, but a bit clunky for other tasks. Also, it’s proprietary and expensive.

Julia doesn’t suffer from any of these flaws. Not only does it have a friendly and elegant syntax, it’s also extremely flexible (you can write low-level and high-level code) as well as being hundreds of times faster than Python and R, and tens of times faster than MATLAB. Say goodbye to the two-language problem plaguing scientific research!

And that’s why I find it such a shame that Julia isn’t as popular as it should be.

Hence, to do my part in spreading the word of Julia, I’ve compiled a list of the best free and paid online courses to learn Julia in this Best Courses Guide (BCG). These courses come from our catalog. Most of the courses are free or free-to-audit, and two offer a free certificate upon completion from JuliaAcademy.

Click on the shortcuts for more details:

Here are my top picks. Click on one to skip to the course details:

Course Highlight Workload
Best Course for Complete Beginners with Free Certificate (JuliaAcademy) 7–8 hours
Best for Experienced Programmers with Free Certificate (JuliaAcademy) 1–2 hours
Best for Complete Beginners with a Focus on Scientific Programming (University of Cape Town) 12–16 hours
Best YouTube-Structured Series for Complete Beginners (doggo dot jl) 6 hours
Best Rigorous Course with Examples of Real-World Applications (MIT) 24–36 hours
Best Concise Course for Complete Beginners (LinkedIn Learning) 2–3 hours
Best for Practicing Julia Coding for all Levels (Exercism) N/A
Best Hands-on Project-Based Course (Manning) 12–18 hours
Best Concise Course for Experienced Programmers (Pluralsight) 2–3 hours

What is Julia?

Julia is a high-level, high-performance dynamic programming language developed specifically for scientific computing and data science. It is designed to run as fast as C but easy to write as Python.

One of the ways Julia is easy to use is its dynamic type system. By allowing the option to implicitly or explicitly declare types, programmers can simplify or improve code performance.

The language also features multiple dispatch, which means methods with the same name can perform different functions based on the arguments provided, which is especially useful for mathematical code where operators change their behavior depending on the type.

Metaprogramming is easy in Julia. Similar to Lisp, code can be represented as a data structure in Julia itself, so a Julia program can process and modify its own code. Furthermore, it is simple to call libraries written in a different language like C or Python without the need of glue code.

Although Julia is a young programming language (it was released in 2018), researchers and professionals have already utilized it in a variety of fields where enormous amounts of data needs to be processed in a reasonable amount of time, like in physics, chemistry, astronomy, engineering, data science, bioinformatics, finance and many more. Plenty of Julia programming jobs are also available, and are being advertised on the Julia discourse community.

Stats

Here are some aggregate stats:

  • The courses combined account for 100K enrollments and views
  • Eight courses are free, free-to-audit, or have a free trial
  • Around 900 people are following Class Central’s Julia Subject
  • Five courses are beginner-level, while four require some programming experience.

Best Course for Complete Beginners with Free Certificate (JuliaAcademy)

My pick for the best Julia course goes to Julia Programming for Nervous Beginners by JuliaAcademy.

If you have no programming experience or feel intimidated by computers, but are curious about learning to write code in Julia this course is for you!

Recommended by the official Julia website, you’ll take small steps up all the way to Julia proficiency and proficiency in programming in general. By the end, you’ll be able to tackle substantial projects all on your own with only what you’ve learned in this course. Plus, you’ll earn a free certificate.

No prior programming experience is needed for this course.

What you’ll learn:

  • Write, run, and analyze Julia code
  • Assign variables and perform operations
  • Debug code using error messages
  • Introduction to boolean logic
  • Manipulate text (strings) in Julia
  • Introduction to reusable code with functions
  • Learn about Julia’s type system and multiple dispatch
  • Explore scopes in relation to functions
  • Control code flow with comparison, logical operators, conditionals, and loops
  • Understand anonymous functions
  • Study handling text files with I/O functions
  • Read and manipulate text files
  • Perform a Monte Carlo simulation on a sample text file.

Dr. Henri Laurie is retired senior lecturer from the University of Cape Town. The course has 80+ bookmarks on Class Central, and it is also recommended by the official Julia website. You can ask questions on the support forum.

Institution JuliaAcademy
Instructor Dr. Henri Laurie
Level Beginner
Workload 7–8 hours
Exercises Quiz
Certificate Free

Best for Experienced Programmers with Free Certificate (JuliaAcademy)

Introduction to Julia (for programmers), also by JuliaAcademy, is for those who already have programming experience get up to speed with Julia, fast! And, you’ll also get a free certificate once you’ve completed the course.

In this course, you’ll learn:

  • Basics: variables and data types
  • Operators and data structures: understand Julia’s operators, strings, dictionaries, tuples, and arrays
  • Loops and conditionals: write loops and conditional statements for program control
  • Functions in Julia: explore function declaration, mutable vs. non-mutable functions, and broadcasting
  • Packages: manage and use packages from the general registry for efficient programming
  • Data visualization: utilize Plots.jl for creating various plots
  • Key features: discuss multiple dispatch, structs, basic linear algebra, and factorizations in Julia.

Dr. Jane Herriman is Director of Diversity and Outreach at Julia Computing and a PhD student at Caltech. The course has 60+ bookmarks on Class Central.

Institution JuliaAcademy
Instructor Dr. Jane Herriman
Level Intermediate
Workload 1–2 hours
Exercises Coding practice
Certificate Free

Best for Complete Beginners with a Focus on Scientific Programming (University of Cape Town)

Julia Scientific Programming, by the University of Cape Town, is a free-to-audit course for beginners who want to explore the Julia programming language. Those with some experience can also benefit from the course.

By the end of the course, you’ll learn how to utilize Julia packages to write simple Julia programs from scratch.

Some programming experience is required to take this course.

What you’ll learn:

  • Introduction to Julia: explore Julia’s capabilities, starting with Julia Notebooks
  • Programming basics: learn arithmetical and logical expressions, type system, and arrays
  • Functions in Julia: use and define functions, highlighting multiple dispatch
  • Scientific computing example: apply Julia to analyze Ebola Virus outbreak data
  • Data manipulation: work with data tables, convert data types, and iterate through arrays
  • Data visualization: utilize the Plots package for visually appealing data representation
  • Ebola virus case study: mathematically model the disease using the SIR model
  • Statistical analysis: use DataFrames for descriptive statistics
  • Optional Honors material: explore collections and functions for interested learners.
Institution University of Cape Town
Provider Coursera
Instructor Dr. Juan H Klopper and Dr. Henri Laurie
Level Beginner
Workload 12–16 hours
Enrollments 37K
Rating 4.4 / 5.0 (425)
Exercises Demos, quizzes, projects
Certificate Paid

Best YouTube-Structured Series for Complete Beginners (doggo dot jl)

Julia for Beginners gives an introduction to the Julia programming language for amateurs, hobbyists, and enthusiasts. By the end of this course, you’ll have an excellent understanding of Julia programming.

These free tutorials are intended for beginners to programming, so no programming experience is required.

In this course, you’ll learn:

  • Essential programming concepts: set up development environment, cover variables, expressions, memory, and data types
  • Data structures and control flow: learn about arrays, tuples, dictionaries, conditionals, loops, and functions
  • Advanced Julia programming: explore multiple dispatch, composite types, style guidelines, debugging, and Julia packages
  • Intermediate computer science: understand algorithms (searching and sorting), analysis, recursion, and peek into Julia’s workings
  • Course recap: summarize and reinforce learned concepts
  • Final projects: practice newfound knowledge with fun projects.

Julia is the first programming language the instructor has learned. In fact, he is entirely self-taught! He also has several other Julia courses, the next course being Julia Analysis for Beginners.

Channel doggo dot jl
Provider YouTube
Level Beginner
Workload 6 hours
Views 45K
Likes 530+
Exercises Follow along with videos and projects
Certificate None

Best Rigorous Course with Examples of Real-World Applications (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

Introduction to Computational Thinking provides a rigorous but rewarding introduction to computational thinking.

The goal of this free course is to broaden your understanding of how computer science and mathematics can connect and mingle with one another to produce exciting applications in other non-related fields like social and climate science. The course also plans to make the learning process fun and enjoyable through interactive exercises.

Although it isn’t strictly a course on Julia, it does aim to teach you Julia. All of the programming in this course is done in Julia, so you’ll be proficient in the language by the time you finish this course.

There are no prerequisites.

You’ll learn about:

  • Images and transformations: represent images as pixel arrays, apply mathematical functions for creative manipulation, explore dynamic programming, and seam carving for image resizing
  • Social science and data science: cover principal component analysis for dimensionality reduction, sampling datasets, random walks modeling, and simulation of real-world statistical applications
  • Climate science: focus on time-stepping for time analysis in datasets, understand climate prediction versus weather prediction, build a basic climate model, and explore advanced models such as ocean currents and global warming.

Alan Edelman is a professor of applied mathematics at MIT and is in fact one of the cocreators of the Julia programming language. There’s also a discord server open to both MIT and non-MIT students where you can ask questions and maybe find a course grading partner.

Institution Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Instructors Alan Edelman, David P. Sanders, and Charles E. Leiserson
Level Beginner
Workload 24–36 hours
Exercises Examples in Julia notebooks
Certificate None

Best Concise Course for Complete Beginners (LinkedIn Learning)

Learning Julia by LinkedIn Learning aims to teach you the basics of Julia.

This course with 1 month of free trial covers the syntax, basic concepts, and features of Julia. First, you’ll go over the language’s feature set, explaining how it differs from other languages. Next, you’ll learn about data types, numbers, and strings in Julia; language features such as data type casting; and control and data structures. At the end of the course, you’ll be ready to write and run Julia code.

In this course:

  • Introduction to Julia: explore the fast and easy-to-learn aspects that distinguish it in scientific computing
  • Basics of Julia code: learn writing code basics, including variables, data types, and handling numbers and strings
  • Control structures: understand conditional statements, loops, functions, and exception handling for code optimization
  • Data structures: discuss arrays, tuples, sets, and dictionaries in the context of Julia
  • Advanced features: explore data type casting, string processing, custom types, and data sorting.

Joe Marini is a Senior Author for LinkedIn Learning with over 50 published titles, covering subjects such as Python programming, Android Development, XML and JSON data processing, Mobile Development, jQuery, and HTML5.

Institution LinkedIn Learning
Instructor Joe Marini
Level Beginner
Workload 2–3 hours
Enrollments 14K
Rating 4.6 / 5.0 (126)
Exercises Programming exercises
Certificate Paid

Best for Practicing Julia Coding for all Levels (Exercism)

Exercism is an online, open-source, free coding platform where you can practice coding and receive mentorship in the Julia programming language. It is recommended by the official Julia website as a great place to put your skills and knowledge into practice.

One special thing about this platform is that you’ll receive personal mentoring for free. When you have solved an exercise, after automatic analysis, it can be reviewed by the volunteer team and feedback will be given to help you improve your code.

Exercises range from easy to hard, so the platform is suitable for all levels of programmers.

Exercises:

  • 59 exercises: varied difficulty levels, easy to medium and hard
  • Tutorial: start with “Hello, World!” printing
  • Easy exercises: find difference of squares, calculate leap years, and implement a rotational cipher
  • Medium exercises: create a clock for times without dates, write a robot simulator, and calculate a Pythagorean triplet
  • Challenging exercises: solve alphametics puzzles, implement rational and complex numbers in Julia.

Exercism provides exercises on 60+ programming languages including Python, Kotlin, F#, and WebAssembly. Their mission is to help everyone get really good at programming, regardless of their background, share the love of programming, and help people upskill as part of their upward social mobility.

Institution Exercism
Level Beginner to Advanced
Workload Self-paced
Enrollments 17K
Exercises Hands-on practice
Certificate None

Best Hands-on Project-Based Course (Manning)

In Learn Julia in Three Small Projects, you’ll get familiar with Julia by building a series of real-world projects.

You’ll complete three projects: a simple stock tracker for a shop; joining the fight against a global pandemic by plotting and modeling the effectiveness of several measures; and finding the cure for a global pandemic using Longest Common Subsequences (LCS), which measures the similarity between two sequences of characters.

By the end of the paid course, you’ll go from beginner-level to solving everyday, real-world problems using Julia.

To take this course, you need some basic mathematics and statistics as well as basic programming skills.

What you’ll learn:

  • Gain experience with essential and advanced Julia tools: functions, arrays, dictionaries, multiple dispatch, and composite types
  • Project 1: build a shop stock tracker with functions for inventory, sales, and cash transactions
  • Project 2: fight a fictional global pandemic using Julia for plotting, estimating new cases, analyzing measures, time-series forecasting, and reporting findings
  • Project 3: find a cure for another fictional global pandemic by identifying the virus’s origin using Longest Common Subsequences to compare animal sequences with the virus sequence.

Joris Limonier has worked at the Unit of Research in Computer Science at the University of Luxembourg and has a strong background in Julia, Python for data science, LaTeX, and Swift. To share his passion for Julia, he creates Julia content including YouTube videos and open-source projects on GitHub.

Provider Manning
Instructor Joris Limonier
Level Beginner to Advanced
Workload 12–18 hours
Exercises Hands-on coding
Certificate None

Best Concise Course for Experienced Programmers (Pluralsight)

In this Pluralsight course with 10 days of free trial, you’ll learn the foundational knowledge needed to write Julia code. By the end, you’ll have the skills and knowledge required to call yourself a Julia coder.

To take Julia: Getting Started, you’ll need an understanding of programming in general (preferred knowledge of Python, R, or Scala), and as a bonus, a mathematical background.

What you’ll learn in this course:

  • “Why Julia?”: explore the reasons for choosing Julia
  • Setup: learn to set up your Julia development environment
  • Coding basics: define variables, use data types, and control program flow
  • Advanced coding: create functions, methods, and modules for code reusability, work with files
  • Package utilization: discover JuliaHub for finding packages to enhance your code and build diverse applications.

Xavier is an entrepreneur, project manager, technical author, trainer, and holds some certifications with Cloudera, Microsoft, and the Scrum Alliance, along with being a Microsoft MVP.

Institution Pluralsight
Instructor Xavier Morera
Level Beginner/Intermediate
Workload 2–3 hours
Rating 4.5 / 5.0 (13)
Exercises Code demos
Certificate Paid

Why You Should Trust Us

Class Central, a Tripadvisor for online education, has helped 60 million learners find their next course. We’ve been combing through online education for more than a decade to aggregate a catalog of 200,000 online courses and 200,000 reviews written by our users. And we’re online learners ourselves: combined, the Class Central team has completed over 400 online courses, including online degrees.

Best Courses Guides (BCG) Methodology

I built this ranking following the now tried-and-tested methodology used in previous Best Courses Guides (you can find them all here). It involves a three-step process:

  1. Research: I started by leveraging Class Central’s database and the internet. Then, I made a preliminary selection of the courses by rating, reviews, and bookmarks.
  2. Evaluate: I read through reviews on Class Central, Reddit, and course providers to understand what other learners thought about each course and combined it with my own experience as a learner.
  3. Select: Well-made courses were picked if they presented valuable and engaging content. They have to fit a set of criteria including comprehensive curriculum, selling price, release date, ratings and enrollments.

Pat revised the research and the latest version of this article.
Best Courses Guides. Start Learning, Stop Procrastinating.

Elham Nazif Profile Image

Elham Nazif

Part-time content writer, full-time computer science student.
Pat Bowden Profile Image

Pat Bowden

Online learning specialist, still learning after 200+ online courses completed since 2012. Class Central customer support and help since 2018. I am keen to help others make the most of online learning, so I set up a website:  www.onlinelearningsuccess.org

Comments 1

  1. Michał

    Thank you!

    Reply

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