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Comment by oldandtired | Hacker News Reader

Then a question for you, as I don't know Julia the Language, how much is required from Base. In other words, if you didn't have the import from Base, what can you not do?

In a language like Unicon/Icon, I can "$include" a source file, I can "link" an ucode (compiled source, unlinked) file, I can "import" a ucode class file, I can put all the source in the same file or I can get the compiler to bring all the files together on the command line and it will basically end up with the same result.

Does Julia provide Base as source to allow you to do anything like the above?

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> if you didn't have the import from Base, what can you not do?

So the part that gets loaded when you load the language/compiler is what is referred to as Base. So, it's kind of impossible to not have it and it is part of the language. So it's somewhat like asking, what can you do without "importing" integers? (ok, that's a hyperbole, but you get the idea ;) ) But, the source code does get shipped, so you might actually go in there and change stuff if you want, and Julia will pick up those changes - even, to get back to that hyperbole, how integers are defined, since they're implemented in pure Julia. I'm not a 100% sure what you're aiming at, but does that answer your question? ;)

Sorry for the tardiness of my response, I have been doing other things including sleeping.

It does answer the question in that it appears that Julia, as a language, doesn't provide you with much to start with, not even the bare bones. I have seen commentaries back in the 1980's that discussed such language designs. It makes for some uniformity but does require much work to be done to create the basic infrastructure that would allow and enable others to use these kinds of languages out of the box. Interesting in some ways, I suppose.

Guess I wrote my answer more ambiguous than I thought: the exact opposite is the case... Julia Base is huge and includes much more than most other languages I know - and that's what gets loaded on start, whether you like it or not ;)

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